The Old Haunt
by rosiespleen
Summary: An AU story originally published at Livejournal.      The 12th Precinct gang congregate at TOH for a pre-wedding celebration in honour of Ryan and Jenny.  The pool table is the focal point for banter, wagers and UST.  Until it's not.
1. Chapter 1

The Old Haunt is like a subterranean replica of his apartment. So Castle in its charm, fixings and comfortable — slightly edgy — atmosphere that Beckett can't help compare it to the man himself. If watching Temptation Lane makes her feel safe and at home, then she can only wonder what The Old Haunt does for Rick.

_Rick?_

His name rolls off her tongue like a bittersweet chocolate syrup.

She's had a glass too many for the first time in ages. Apart from feeling flushed and slightly loose, Beckett is totally normal. Sober? Um, not so much maybe. But normal, yes.

It's something she tries to tell herself as she sits at the bar watching Lanie and Esposito dance as though they're joined at the hip. Lanie loves this place. She'd grabbed Beckett's arm just before tongue kissing her man and manipulating him to a the small darkened dance area.

'This _joint!_ I adore it,' she had gushed. 'It's so Castle. It's so full of atmosphere. And girl? You could be the queen of this haunt, you hear me? Castle's queen, you get it!'

Beckett had. She still does, but Lanie shouldn't try to match Kate Beckett drink for drink. Lanie is always warned others about Beckett's ability to hold her booze, but whenever they're out on a night like this, Lanie gets carried away and her immaculately straightened hair bobs into its natural spring.

Tonight, her cheer is contagious.

'Did you just say "_Castle's a queen?_"' Beckett asked, her lips ghosting the edge of her glass of champagne. She should never drink this riotous, bubbly stuff. It makes girls dance and drop their pants … or so the old adage goes. So far, Kate's done neither, and she intends stopping after this lovely, lively glass way before her pants get too tight. Not that this is likely to happen. She's wearing a dress for the occasion.

Lanie had laughed loudly at Beckett's joke, tossed her head and winked. 'If Castle is a queen, then he don't want you outta that dress so he can wear it. The way he's looking at you — the way he _always_ looks at you — is like you're the heir to his massive, stiff-backed throne! Know what I'm getting at, sweetie?'

'Lanie? Shut the front door up_. Sweetie!_,' Beckett had replied, inhaling the yeasty bubbles of her glass, wishing she could hate this place. Hate The Old Haunt for the way it feels like Castle.

'Honey? I might need to get you down the lab, use some of my old college texts to remind you 'bout the birds an' the little old bees.' Lanie drained the remains of her glass and threw her arm around Beckett's shoulders. 'I know Josh has only been gone a couple weeks—'

'It's six days! Just six days!'

'Days? Weeks?' Lanie shrugged. 'You shouldn't wait around too long, babe. A girl can find cobwebs down there. Rust even, you know, if it's not used regular—?'

Lanie almost choked on her own words as Kate pushed her away towards Esposito, creating a gap in the small crowd that lead to Castle's direct line of vision. It was as though the Red Sea had parted. She was at one end of the bar, drinking, laughing and watching her friend making merry with her boy. Castle was by the pool table, chatting to Jenny and her smiling fiance, Ryan.

_Why is everyone in such serious relationships all of a sudden? And why is one of her good friends a medical examiner with her own jumping hormones?_

A week ago, Beckett had been wrapped in the safety net of Josh. She'd been trapeze flying between the doctor-catcher on one swing and Castle on the highest perch in the big top. Not prepared to commit to the obvious catch and afraid to reach out and leap for the dangerous, racy ride. But the change has come. The harness she'd been wearing — a rope-climbing rigging that would haul her to safety if Castle encouraged her to take that risk — has gone.

Josh had called her out on her fear in the bluntest possible way, and Kate can still hear his resigned goodbye taunting her, goading her to admit her feelings to everyone.

Including herself.

'It's not what you think, Josh.'

Kate had been matter-of-fact, immediately aware that she was on the verge of being dumped from the suddenly upended safety net. Unsure if she really cared, though it was nice to wake up in the morning knowing the only threat she faced was the danger of the streets. Not the scary realities of lust and love.

'Whatever happened,' Josh had said, leaning his hip on the corner of her table, 'you're heart's not in it. In _this._' He'd waved the air between them. We're both smart enough to know it, and it's time, Kate.'

Beckett had crossed her arms across her chest. 'Nothing_ happened_. Except in the line of duty … like we talked about …'

But it had happened and it meant something. Josh didn't have to be a cardiac surgeon to know that there was only room enough in his chest for one intact ticker, and that Kate was wearing hers on her sleeve. It was unfortunate that the sleeve was tucked in close to a 'WRITER' vest.

He'd left, saddened, and she'd eaten enough ice-cream to make herself feel sick. He'd mentioned nothing about Castle, although Rick hung in the air of her apartment like an impish shadow, that pulled on her ponytail till she wanted to cry out for a hug.

Beckett refused to ring him that night, just as she has neglected to tell Castle that Josh walked out of her life nearly a week ago. He probably knows. Once Esplanie knew something, so does the New York Times.

She watches Castle work people in his Old Haunt. He seems effortless, clasping Jenny's arm to exchange some tidbit about Ryan, laughing at something Ryan says about his bachelor days being over. He's a natural communicator, a people magnet, and all of a sudden Kate wants to be near him, if only to be a negative charge to his positive allure.

The teasing, the barbs, the riddled subtext. It's all about the magnetism and he oozes it. She doesn't want to blunt it, necessarily, because it's so damn attractive, but she wants to be one of his iron filings. The most important one, goddam it!

Just as she's about to slink off her bar stool and saunter over to mess Castle's armour, she spots him watching her. His mouth is quirked in that smile, his eyes narrow and his head dips. Before she can move, he leaves Ryan and Jenny to cuddle, muttering something about them enjoying 'their last two weeks of freedom.'

Because, yeah, Beckett thinks to herself as Castle steals the stool next to her and invades her personal Rick-free zone, there's a wedding in a couple of weeks. She's been invited '_with friend'_, Castle has been talking about the big day since he received his invitation. They'll both be there, socializing, chatting, drinking. He'll be wearing a tie, a fantastic shirt, and she's already picked her dress. Something tastefully snug, with a dash of vibrant colour, a lot of black and a little bit of leg—

'Enjoying the bubble party, Beckett?' he asks, swiveling the stool around so his trouser- clad thigh traps her legs against the bar. She wonders whether she should ask him — snidely — if he wants to sit on her knee, but thinks better of it. He'll probably act without thinking and she'll be squashed beneath a welcomed weight.

'Bubble party? Really Castle? I thought you'd come up with something more descriptive than that.'

She resists rolling her eyes, but flashes him a jousting smile and he's immediately up for the contest. 'Why detective? Wasn't it _you_ who implied the bubble might not burst if you were in it with the right person?'

She had. Didn't mean she'd let him win here. 'I just meant, Castle, that it's better to be in a bubble with the right person than, say … say a prick. Doesn't mean you have to name Ryan and Jenny's pre-marriage get-together a bubble party.'

Castle's reaction is as instantaneous as his love of verbal parry. He laughs. Hard and strong, the rumble in his chest a deep energy that moves Kate on another level. She's hard press to deny the need to touch him. She wishes she could play with the front of his shirt as easily as she could anyone else she's _this_ intimate with — because they iare/i intimate. She has never had this level of repartee, this synergy with anyone else in her life.

_The last thing she wants is another relationship so soon — isn't it? The first thing she wants is to bury her lips in that jester-like mouth and wipe the cocky quips and sexy innuendo from his mind by kissing him into oblivion._

Instead, she drinks to smother a retort and give her mouth something else to do but moisten in anticipation.

'So?' he asks, knocking her knee with his own and making her wobble. 'What do you think of the new pool table? Looks pretty great over there. Do you play, by the way?'

'Oh yeah. I play a bit,' she says, avoiding eye contact by looking at the table. She wonders if he'll pick up on the sexual context of _that_ the way he had a few weeks ago with her suggestive look about sleeping 'on it'. She doesn't have to wait long.

'You certainly do.' Castle clears his throat. 'Play._ A bit._ I imagine you play well, Detective, pocket the ball quite easily?'

She spills her drink. In an effort to thrust her hands in a pantomime of how she can caress a pool cue, Beckett misses the mark and upends what's left of her champagne.

'Would you like another, Kate? I hear the owner of The Old Haunt has a big … a really big …'

Castle pauses for effect and Beckett tries to look as cool as she can. Fortunately, the cute young barman she'd met on the first day — whatever the hell his name is — moves in to refresh her drink before Castle can take his series of 'big' comments any further.

She thanks the hot bar boy and takes a sip of the crisp bubbles. They tickle her nose and stimulate her orally. Dutch courage or something? 'Yeah. I've heard the owner has the biggest, a really big, the most massive … ego_ ever!_ You know him?'

'I do. I know him. And I was going to say, that he has a really big bar tab and a big heart, so any drink that an NYPD detective wants at The Old Haunt, she should be able to get. Any time, any day.'

_Always?_

'I'll remember that, Castle. The next time I spill my champagne, I'll remember about the owner's big … big … _things_.' She grins into her drink. 'He must be really huge.'

'He's in proportion,' says Castle, in his 'separately' voice. 'Well proportioned, according to all sources.'

Half-turning on his stool, he brushes her knees with his thigh again. Beckett wishes he wouldn't do that but without thinking, she moves in towards his back to see what's caught his interest. Her gaze dips to his collar and hairline tucked just beneath. She recalls how it feels to sensitive fingertips. Bizarrely, her lips tingle and her lower body tightens.

It would be so easy to move forward a matter of inches and place a kiss where his hair catches his skin, where it turns prickly and shorter. She sighs and waits to blame the champagne for that noise, but knows it's something else. A memory caught between a kiss and a series of stolen moments since.

When Castle turns back to her, there's barely lip room between them. The last time they were this close, she'd been ready to forsake the promises she'd made to herself when she'd first met Castle — don't get involved with a rich playboy who undresses with his eyes and makes love with his words.

'Would you do me the honour, Detective Beckett, of accompanying me to the wedding of our colleague and his lovely fiance,' Castle whispers so intensely, she can feel his words on her lips. In a surprising move that nearly has Beckett falling from her stool and spilling her latest drink, Castle takes her hand that rests between them, and starts to rub his thumb against the tendons that move her fingers.

She feels undone. She wonders if he can see the walls are down by the gloss of her eyes, and she tries desperately to steel them over. 'I-um … I'm … '

'We're both guests. I'd let you drive. We could take the Ferrari.' He pauses, smiling. 'If it's raining, I could hold a golf umbrella over your head as you're steering.'

Beckett hates stuttering. She dislikes being disarmed. She wants the upper hand, but sometimes, when someone is stroking your wrist and giving you all they're able to give at that moment, it's hard to be cynical. So she chooses direct. 'You've heard about Josh? Thank you, but I don't want a pity date, if that's what you're getting at? Castle? _Castle?_'

He flutters his eyes half-closed and looks down at their hands. Beckett notices the dense line of his eyelashes, the small frown that's developing and regrets some of her bluntness.

'The only pity that I can see, Kate, is if we don't enjoy the wedding and miss out on an opportunity to spend some time in each others company. Away from work.' He's speaking so quietly, she has to move closer, but the moment's over. 'We're both going. Why not carpool? I promise to put the top up if it's windy or wet, and if we breakdown I won't make you push in your heels.'

Beckett can't help smile.

'Oh, unless you're wearing something low-cut. Then you'll have to lean over the back and push, so you keep abreast of the situation.'

She pushes his arm, not disrupting his contact with her other hand. 'When did you find out? About Josh?'

His hand turns hers over and he starts running two fingers along the line of her radial pulse. He's going to kill her in a minute. She realizes how her taunts and innuendo must make him feel this way on a daily basis, but it doesn't stop his scramble of fingers. He once told her he has soft hands ...

'Montgomery told me. Last week.'

'What? It only happened a few days ago. How can Montgomery have known last week?'

_And why haven't you said anything? Done anything? Come over, bearing gifts and hugs?_

Castle shrugs. 'The whole precinct knows by now. You know how it is.'

He stills the finger action and she wants to ask for more. 'And I'm sorry. About it. _Josh_ … are you okay?'

She uses her free hand to lift the glass to her mouth. 'Yeah,' she says, muffled by yeast and taste and verve. She's not lying. She's better than okay and Josh will be too. In time.

'Well then, if you're not broken-hearted, you don't need a pity date. _But,_' he says, 'what say you about escorting me? Will you do me the honour of your company, or will you be desperate? And dateless?'

Kate yanks on their hands and pulls him in, then pushes at his chest to show her disgust. He grins. In a move that has them both on the edge of their stools, debating distance from some lip action, he grasps her forearm in both of his hands and looks like he's going to plant an impromptu kiss if front of all their colleagues and friends.

_Not now. Not yet!_

She raises an eyebrow to stop him and he's instantly aware of Lanie getting a drink nearby and Esposito watching them from behind Kate's shoulder. 'Your answer,' he rumbles, looking at her mouth.

'Okay. Yes, as long as I get to drive the red car.' The public kissing danger abates in a few seconds so she has the guts to lean in and whisper in his ear. 'As fast as I want.'

Leering, Castle grasps her hand in his, lifts it to his lips and deposits a kiss to the tendons he's been fondling. Just when she thinks she might melt off the stool, he tips his head, looks at her like she's made him stupidly happy, then presses his open lips to the point on the inside of her wrist that makes her so responsive. And leaves it there. For seconds. When she wants him to stop. Nope, she doesn't … when she feels the tip of his tongue against her softest skin, she wants to groan _ssssstop_ … she doesn't.

His understanding of her body within the course of ten minutes astounds her. Imagine if he had a weekend of study ...

'Hey Castle,' laughs Esposito, from somewhere down the bar. 'If you can come up for air, how 'bout a game of pool? If I win, The Old Haunt buys me drinks for the next month.'

'Oh yeah?' says Castle as he looks up, as dazed of expression as she feels. 'And what do I get in return?'

He's only watching her, dipping his focus to her lips, to the subtle cleavage she suddenly wants to get as much of his attention as he's willing to give. She wishes they were alone, but who'll make that first move?

'I'll let you drive a car with sirens and lights.' says Esposito, loudly. 'Real fast, maybe along the highway? Just don't tell Montgomery. Oh, or Beckett.'

She hears laughter. It's not hers.

As Castle makes to leave for the pool competition, Beckett pulls his head down and says in his ear, 'don't think that Esposito's bet applies to us. If you win, I still drive, okay?'

He lets her hand go and ruffles the end of her hair. 'It's a deal, Detective. Oh, but perhaps later, when it's quieter? We should have a game of our own … the winner of that one could take the stakes he … um, or _she_ determines as fair.' He wiggles his eyebrows and turns.

'You must be pretty damned good if you think you can pocket more balls than me, Castle,' she tosses his way, thinking this will be the end of it. Till later. When it's quieter.

He's back in her face before she can draw breath, or turn to Lanie and gossip, or watch his ass as he walks away. She will. She's done that before tonight.

'What did you say?' he asks her, a heartbeat away from her lips.

'I said,' she stands to push him upwards so they're toe-to-toe. Her favourite Castle-provoking position. 'You must be pretty confident you're that damned good.'

He leans in to the point where Beckett almost shuts her eyes in anticipation, but instead of feeling his lips against hers, his mouth is at her ear.

'You have no idea.'

As he saunters away, Beckett feels the warmth of The Old Haunt wrap her in something as familiar as a winter coat, and her safety net vanishes with the pocketing of each pool table ball.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks so very much for the kind words regarding this story. It's complete, but being tweaked here and there along the way, so I hope to post a new part each day. Comments are always appreciated by writers and assist with the process of improving our skills and motivation, so again, thank you._

**Chapter 2**

There are two kinds of folks who sit around pool tables thinking about how to make a decisive move on Kate Beckett — psychopaths and mystery writers. He's the kind that plays better.

He used to think he played better at games of wit, affairs of the heart, horizontally-inclined challenges of all varieties. Then he met a homicide detective that can melt his dice from twenty paces and rattle his cage simply by looking at him.

Castle is not used to the chase. Since he hit puberty and discovered he had a certain panache with the ladies, he's rarely had to ask twice. _He rarely has to ask_. The fact that he's now worth a fortune, renowned for his prowess between soft, subtle sheets and has enough experience to sink a fleet of sexy women into oceans of orgasms has added to the appeal.

To the swashbuckling persona of Richard Edgar Castle.

Then he met Beckett, and folklore has become a facade. Initially, he'd just wanted to get into her pants. If he's entirely honest, he still wants that with a passion verging on manic … oh, but he wants to make love to her, of course, and tell her how crazy he is about her. His feelings have developed from those first primitive urges.

_Tonight?_ He wants to grab the pool cue from her hands and smash it against the gorgeous table he procured from Sotheby's. His emotions are that raw. What better way to show her than by smacking hardened, stiffened wood against a velvety, lush surface, watching everything batter and blister, crack and then … then … _flop?_

He's a writer. It's all about the metaphor.

Or he could just use his considerable girth, bend her backwards over the centre pocket and line up his lower body against hers, there — where he knows she'll have to adjust her legs to steady them both — and kiss her before she can react to what's happening. They'll fit together like her driving and his gear stick, his ego and her id. Castle can tell by the way those impractical, super sexy heels push her right up to his preferred height.

_They'll fit, alright. Like latex gloves on a hot cop._

He'll use his fingers to find that racy wrist spot, where her veins sprinkle the inside of her forearm. Oh, yes Detective Beckett. You may think you've got the upper hand in this quiet, darkened Old Haunt, but I've seen your pupils dilate when I caress that part of your body. Yes. And your lips part a little bit and your nostrils flare …

There are two kinds of folks who sit around pool tables thinking about the best ways to seduce Kate Beckett— psychopaths and mystery writers. He's the kind that lays better.

To hell with the charm and gentlemanly deeds. He's tried to be her friend — he has — what with the coffee and the conversation and the camaraderie. He's tried to be her big brother, too. He's cracked inappropriate jokes, pulled her piggy tales, introduced her to his poker buddies. They've bickered and lounged about, but he's never felt fraternal towards Beckett.

If anything, she makes him feel like a horny frat boy.

But it's when she slides off her barstool, walks over to the pool table with the grace of someone who hasn't had any champagne, and touches the front of his shirt that Castle decides he's tired of being her plucky sidekick.

Well, he can be plucky, with emphasis on the lucky and he can be lewd, by incorporating an 'F' at the front of the word someone along the line, but it doesn't have to be right now. Just a kiss will do it tonight. One of those Beckett specials, delivered with equal measures tentative, sexual assurance, risque intentions.

_Oh yeah, a kiss will do, Kate._

Surely he's not being unfaithful to The Plucky Sidekick Philosophy by admitting he wants Kate Beckett flat on her back in his bed. Or wet and willing in her bathtub. Or hot and harried on the hearth (preferably when his mother and Alexis are out of town) or a thousand different ways over the next few years.

A plucky sidekick can be both loyal and sexually decadent in the Beckett/Castle universe, especially if Richard Castle is writing the scene.

'So, Castle? You ready? I see Esposito's lost interest. I heard him tell Lanie he won. _Wow._' She arches an eyebrow and leers towards Esplaine. 'You ready to lose twice in one night?'

Instead of following Beckett's gaze to watch Esposito grabbing Lanie's jacket and herding her away from the dance floor, Castle looks down at her hands. Instead of recognizing that she's asking if he's ready to play a game of pool, he fantasizes that she's undressing him and assessing — in her Homicide Detective kind of way — whether he is ready.

For her.

And instead of wanting to play a game with small balls on a table, he wants to play with any balls on any surface with her …

Although it's not a game now. It may have started out as something akin to a sexual sparring sport, but Castle is not merely hanging around for the playoffs. He wants pole position at all the home and away activities. He wants—

'_Castle?_ Do you wanna break?'

Oh, God. He's hard enough to break, and she hasn't even primed her cue yet! Or rubbed the tip of it with chalk.

Beckett breathes closer. 'Break? The _rack?'_

She's playing with the hem of his shirt as the 'C' of _rack _hits his hearing. The bottom of his shirt had loosened during the series of three games he shared with Esposito and, uncharacteristically, he's left it hang outside his belt until now. It was a sign that he'd lost to Esposito and felt disheveled, exposed. It had felt comfortable, but the instant her knuckles graze the skin near his navel, he gasps.

It's audible enough. She knows exactly what she's doing, but the instant her knobbly bones scorch him, surprise registers on her face. Perhaps she hadn't expected to find he had skin? Maybe she thought he would have reptile scales or be an alien life form from Forbidden Planet?

'Ah, sorry 'bout that,' she grins, grabbing the pool cue with her other hand, but still tugging on his shirt hem. 'Didn't mean to give you a shock. Just wondered why this is hanging out.'

'It's always hanging. I'm a guy.'

She gives him that look, reaches for the chalk and buffs the tip of her cue. Her teeth cusp her lower lip and she dips her head in concentration, causing Castle to fry internally. He expends energy on _not_ groaning. And if it _was_ hanging, It's not hanging any more.

'I said hanging _out!_ Not just hanging, Castle.' Beckett looks downwards from his shirttails. It's a slow, suggestive appraisal. 'Don't tell anyone, but I kinda like the look on you.'

He imagines himself smiling in a daze, all the while wondering what would happen if he ducked his fingers beneath his waistband and pushed the tail of his shirt into his boxers. Where would the Beckett hand go then? As a leading detective, she'd have to investigate the hot trail of undercover evidence and hard leads down there. _Wouldn't she?_

'The un-tucked Castle? It suits The Old Haunt.'

'Really?' he asks, watching the demur tease at the top of her v-necked dress and trying not to gape. He makes a frazzled, mental note about always having his shirt untidy, especially at the Precinct. Especially in her apartment.

She's obviously going to break the _rack_. She's lining up every single aspect of her body, pivoting feline-like and forward onto the green surface like a sexy, smutty crowd surfer at a concert for the nude. _Oh, Christ._ There's another visual he doesn't need.

'Yeah, I like it,' Beckett purrs, tipping inwards to take the first shot. 'You're really casual. I guess the next thing we know, you'll have your pants loosened at the top and I'll get a glimpse of your preferred label?'

_Um … what?_

She readjusts her hips, and in a move that almost has Castle weeping, sucking in the heat of the air that's suddenly on_ fire_, Beckett stands, blunts the chalk against the end of her cue again and winks. It's long, shuttered. So damn sensuous that Castle has to stop himself from grabbing her hand and swinging her around to face him, like he did on the night of that kiss.

When he'd closed his eyes and seen himself for the very first time. When she'd pulled away and reassessed, but jumped right back in anyway. And she'd moaned. He knew that, and he can make her moan again. He can _do _this.

'So?' He asks, from somewhere between his groin and throat. 'You're breaking, I take it?'

He's trying to keep up, but his verbal timing is being saturated by physical sensation. She's bending over her cue, champagne-loved and grinning, winking and flirting. Castle doesn't feel like talking as much anymore. He'd rather evoke a verb or two — _like pinion or compress or ravage or thrust._

'I like to make the first move. Especially when I'm breaking balls on a table.'

He wishes she would. Make the first move … among other things. Verbs and stuff.

'Uh, wait! Beckett?' he says, as Ryan comes over and announces that he and Jenny are leaving. There's only a few random patrons left. Esposito is still trying to get Lanie to stop dancing and Castle hopes he succeeds soon.

It's almost time to close the joint.

It's almost time to give Beckett a private showing of his own Old Haunt. That's what he's calling it now, for tonight, at least. Just to be thematic.

He loves it when he speaks dirty to himself. Or his imagination … oh, but Beckett's hugging Jenny and kissing Ryan on the cheek? She must have had more champagne than he realized. Castle wants some of what she's giving, thanks.

He presses his hand to Ryan's back as a gentle sign of congratulations, then pushes the younger, shorter couple towards the exit sign when they show further evidence of dragging their heels. Not that he wants to get rid of all the guests. Just those who might prevent Beckett from removing her dress and walking around in her lingerie. They can go the fuck home.

'Night!'

'Yes, yes, you're welcome, bro. Have a good evening,' he calls to Ryan, spotting Esposito getting another drink, _damn him to a thirsty hell._ At least Lanie is entertaining them both by dancing and chatting to staff and a handful of other guests. 'Um, Beckett? Now. Where were we?'

'I was breaking. You were contemplating losing and probably anticipating what I want when I win.'

Castle leans against his pole … um … his _cue,_ fumbles with fresh air and staggers forward into Beckett as she prepares her shot. In an accidental stumble, he ends up pressing against her arm, his face on her shoulder, his hand juggling with the front of her dress — _whoops_ — and then plunging down so that his other fist slaps the table.

'Castle! For God's sake! I know you want to win, but you don't have to put me off my game by … by … well, whatever it is you're doing there.'

Simultaneously, they both look at the slight dip in the front of her dress. He cannot look away, daren't move for fear of loss of life through sheer disappointment, while Beckett raises her eyes from her cleavage and tries to reclaim eye contact. With him.

It doesn't happen.

'Are we done? _Here?_'

She whispers, watching him checking her out. Despite her words, they're not hissed and she doesn't pull away, so what's a Castle to do but maintain his position. On a hill, with a wonderful view of the valley and a wee drawbridge that's bobbing up and down.

'Haven't even started.'

He doesn't have the decency to look embarrassed. She doesn't have a reason to be offended, is seems, so he takes his time. Moving above her, over and against her. And he feels every inch of her.

Beckett doesn't smell like cherries, but an intoxicating combination of classy perfume and The Old Haunt (his bar, not the other Old Haunt … although these ideas are arousing an odd feeling of excitement). He can also detect skin and soap and woman …

If he rotates the tiniest bit inward, slightly lower and closer, Castle is sure he'll be able to run his lips across the expanse of flesh that's dying for moisture. He owns these types of lips, after all, and Beckett will no doubt be wanting to—

'Castle?' She says, from somewhere in his wettest, wildest dream. 'It might be a good idea to move a little bit before … before … _oh!_'

Evidently, she's not unaffected by a moment of extreme contact, when the bristle of his cheek grazes the silkiness dividing her dress and neck. He doesn't feel smug about repaying her for the earlier knuckle-dusting of his stomach. If anything, Castle would like the payback to continue all night and into the rest of their lives, but he needs to right himself, if only because of the inconvenient appearance of Dr Parish and Mr Esposito at the table.

_Go home, guys! C'mon!_

He uses the distraction in an effort to reclaim the upper hand. Any goddamn hand!

'When I win this game, Beckett,' he whispers, aware that Lanie is trying to talk as well, but forcing his words into the detective's other ear, 'I want to see your tattoo. I'm that confident you won't be able to take that bet. Then I'll be the winner. Of this game. We're playing.'

Castle watches Kate's eyes widen. She throws a smile Lanie's way, mumbles something about her friend 'coming over to witness her destruction of Castle', then cocks her head slightly.

'You are so on, Castle,' she smokes quietly, through a sassy, sensual smile. The words are for his hearing only, and somehow that makes the gauntlet casting more erotic. 'But you have no clue what I'll be wanting when I win.''

Without telling him, she checks the roll of the white ball as she sends it hurtling towards the colours. They break into a star of dazzling pieces, bumping about all over the place, much like his heart.

'Rack 'em up, Esposito,' she tells Javier in the tone she uses at work. 'This game is one and done — no best of three, okay? Just winner takes all.'

Castle nods, not caring what she might want in the unlikely event of her winning. Sure, he lost to Esposito, but the stakes weren't high and he likes the idea of buying his friend a drink at The Old Haunt whenever he's around. With Beckett, there's not a stiffened cues chance in Flopland that he's going to lose.

He has an idea where her body art is at, and as she bends over the table, eyes only on the ball, his heart pounds to a rampant tattoo. The balls cannot be broken quickly enough.


	3. Chapter 3

'So, Detective Beckett?'

She raises her eyes just enough to catch him standing across the table, watching her. He's smiling, goading her? His clothing is so uncharacteristically disheveled and his demeanor so overtly sexual, Beckett can barely look away. For some reason, no matter how much water and champagne she drinks, her mouth is dry and she feels like her heart is pushing her ribcage outward. Somehow, Kate keeps her posture low over her pool cue, her concentration wandering for a second as she focuses on the predator.

How the hell is this gonna end?

There are a thousand different answers to that question. None of them involve her winning anything but a rosy blush to the particular slice of skin where her tattoo lies.

She's only a dozen shots into their 'one-and-done' game and already Beckett senses that this is not like challenging Castle to a sparring contest. He's polished, adept at holding the cue correctly, comfortable thrusting over the table. On the last two occasions, Beckett has stolen furtive glances at exactly how he pistons his hips during his follow through to a shot, and it's not to see how a winner might stand. She's thinking about something else entirely! No wonder she's losing.

She'd be lying to herself if she said she's not desirous of feeling this skill performed in a different arena. She is. The desire is dripping from her neckline through to the crevice between her breasts, making her so hot that she wants to rip off her top …

_No I don't_, Beckett tries to say to herself while watching Castle buttress his inner thigh over the edge of the table.

He positions his balls with great experience. With care and precision. Kate's own game is above average, but the comparison sucks. She wishes she'd taken him onto a cushioned mat, flipped him onto his back and blown him away.

_Literally_. Okay, maybe not with a gun, but a blow is a blow, especially down on a mat … _and this is the line of thinking that's getting her nowhere, fast._

Just stop it! She tells her brain. But her glands enlarge and 'things' become whetted with the speed of the next Castle quip.

She needs another drink.

Kate's a beer drinker by trade, it's part of the job if not her personal preference. The champagne has created an atmosphere that's much looser than the relaxed feeling she gets from a post-case ale, and it doesn't help her maintain a typical tight composure. The Beckett in Charge ethos. The last drink has pushed her over the line of absolute control.

Only ten minutes ago, Kate was more at ease about the game. Lanie had around. She had 'whoa-ed' at the idea of Beckett and Castle going head-to-head, that there was a wager involved and someone would be declared winner. Had Lanie known that Castle wants to see her tattoo if he wins, Beckett is pretty damn sure her friend would make Esposito stay longer.

'You're not staying?' Kate didn't know if she was pleased or horrified when Lanie had mentioned it was time.

'I've got to go, sweetie pie,' Lanie hiccuped in her ear and rubbed her own hand suggestively over Beckett's cue. 'But take it from me! Castle's got one sexah look on his face this eve and you could easily get lady-lucky tonight. In fact, with those come to _my_ bed eyes you be wearing? The luck might all go his way. It's on. You got what I'm saying, gal?'

Beckett snorted and pulled the cue away from her friend. 'It's not like that.' (She was so full of it, and Lanie knew). 'He's probably just looking for a way to put his first notch on this pool table, you know? Guys like Castle love the game, want a trophy — an acknowledgment — and that's about it.'

'Nah-uh, De-tective-No-Fun! He's the real deal. And there's so much more to the Ricky package, and you know it. He's got the cash flow, the heady-oh-so-heady blend of experience and looks and large, soft hands. And … and, and, and, and, and …'

Lanie had gotten louder. Beckett looked over her friend's head to eyeball Esposito, trying to convince him to intervene, but no cigar. Esposito was giving Castle a rundown on the best ways to beat Beckett, although his hands didn't match his words. He seemed to be muttering something about the angles of entry, the trajectory of the balls, when all the while his fingers were making hourglass symbols and thrusting movements in front of a laughing Castle face.

_What the—?_

'And honey?' Lanie had continued with unrestrained enthusiasm. 'Castle is cashed up, sexy, older, young at heart—'

'Immature.'

'Oh, but not sexually! Very worldy with the women ...'

'Yeah, Lanie. Two ex-wives that we_ know_ about—'

You mark my words, he might be youthful at his core, but his extremities? _One_ extremity in particular? _Ricardo Castleman_ has … has … has …'

Beckett had put her hand on her friend's shoulder to still the flow of words and steady her stance. 'C'mon Lanie. Enough Castle love. He's got a big enough ego anyway.'

'Oh, that's not all to it,' Lanie said, looking over to where Esposito and Castle were still involved in a smiling conference. 'He's got the gear. Ricardo's turret is the biggest on any castle I've ever—'

'The _gear?_' Beckett had interrupted, arching an eyebrow and nodding in disbelief. 'All this talk is leading to drugs? Castle and _gear? _ Like drugs? Um, Lanie? I think Esposito is calling—'

'Not drugs, girl. His _gear!'_

In a move that reminded Beckett of herself, Lanie sighed and rolled her eyes in frustration. 'You cops call it one thing, but sometimes? In the ME rooms, we know the _gear_ — the _actual_ gear — as being the parts,' Lanie joined her fingers at the top, created a inverted V with her hands and pumped downwards over her thighs. 'Down_ here.'_

'What?'

Beckett remembered being similarly confused when Natalie Rhodes asked her if Castle was gay. Instead of spitting her drink this time, she felt her face furnace. 'He has … um … well … wha? Um … how the hell would you know that?'

Beckett didn't want to be interested, wasn't up to discussing this with anyone, let alone her friend who was in a profession where these things were measured. _Of course she knows comparisons of anatomical features. Holy fuck, she does know what she's talking about._

Lanie had laughed. 'I've seen it. Sorry sweetie, but I have and 's impressive.'

Kate screwed up her gaze and mentally slapped herself for drinking champagne. It was clouding her judgment. She couldn't tell if Lanie was having her on or testing her out. Whatever the case, a detective had to know more.

She gulped, wanting desperately to swallow the question that was pressing on her larynx, but it bobbled out with the contraction of her voicebox. 'H-how? How did you? Lanie?' she frowned, aware of Castle finishing his conversation in her periphery. 'Did you? Really? But … how?'

Lanie leaned against the table, swung a drinking straw around and around 'tween her fingers and leered. 'I walked in on him in the lab bathroom. Was an accident, baby, but a more interesting … ah … enlightening accident? I aint never had.'

Lanie had giggled. She stood straighter, rubbed her thumb and forefinger together in the air and mouthed '_hawt_', then oozed towards Esposito mumbling something to the effect of Castle 'making a move before hell froze over or the end of season four' ... _whatever that meant._

Esposito had cast his puppy dog look Lanie's way and they were off faster than a bride's underwear, Lanie chirping some thanks about their host being 'so generous. In so many, many different ways ...'

They'd gone, but this is now, and in the likely event of Castle winning and demanding to collect, Beckett has made her decision. It's out-of-character, dishonest even, and it's so un-Beckett like, she almost pinches herself to check it's really her.

She's going to welch on her bet. She's going to run, if she has to, far from his Old Haunt, away from the possibility of encountering warm, dexterous hands dipping beneath her top to shush away the strap of her bra.

She'll hate herself in the morning, but so be it. There's every chance that if he wins and the bet is consummated … _oh, my God, but that's not the right word, she bashes at her brain_ … if Castle wins and the bet is _collected_, Beckett is in the mood where she might just take that next step and end up hating them both in the morning.

Whether it's the champagne, the fact they're both single or the sight of a charismatic man with his shirt hanging out like a little boy, Beckett shivers at the idea of him trying to gain access to her tattoo and her using her training and skills to get away. _Ohhhh._

She's ridiculous! She's never felt freer, but she'll be minus her clothing _and_ ridiculous if she doesn't focus on a getaway plan and the game — the one that's happening on the table — very soon.

'So, Detective Beckett?' he asks again, moving to the top of the table in deference to her next shot, which seems to be taking an eternity to make. 'I suppose I should ask what you want if you win …'

He bolsters his weight against the frame of the table, lowering his body so that he's in direct line of her shot. She makes the move. Her white ball rebounds from the cusp of the corner pocket, hits the ball she didn't intend, then rolls to an area that puts her well and truly behind the eight ball. Already? They're not even halfway. Performing like this is going to make the end more infuriating. _Him_ more infuriating.

'Hey,' she says, standing bolt upright, stick mimicking her posture. It's like a lance, ready to knock the jousting king from his steed. 'If you're going to stand in my line of sight every time I make a shot, I'm going to replay it. You're just puttin' me off.'

She sounds one-part nervous teen girl who has found herself alone with a teacher crush for the first time. The other parts fall under the very wide, wet umbrella of sexually aroused, flirtatiously corrupt and just flagrantly turned on. The tone of her voice gives everything away, even though she's trying to channel precinct Beckett.

She hates herself for it. Kate had wanted to sound annoyed.

Moving his lips in that impossibly quirky way — like he's amused and stimulated beyond reason — Castle gets closer. He uses the edge of the table like a panther might use a tree branch between himself and his mate — all sleek and stealth moves, smiling, cunning, sensual … damn him! He's behind her, holding her cue stick before she gets a chance to assert her 12th Beckett authority.

'Come now, Beckett! The house rules don't allow replaying of any kind, especially when the pool player only requires that shot again,' he moves his mouth to whisker against her ear, 'when that player is losing. _And_ there is a wager involved.''

Beckett clenches her teeth and grits the muscles in her lower body … or is it the other way around? She doesn't know anymore. All she can think about is how very close he is to nestling his untucked, unloosened-shirt front against the needy sway of her spine. And how damn much she wants it, even as she tries to negate all emotion and tension relating to this man.

_She wants him as much as she doesn't. _Sometimes more.

'And Kate?' he whispers, causing her to almost arch back into him regardless of attempting a firm stance. She manages to stop-gap the gasp of her teeth against her lower lip. 'There's no such excuse as losing because someone is putting you off. I've done nothing … am _doing_ nothing … that could possibly put anyone off their game.'

_Then what's that thing you're doing with your voice, projecting it so that it reverberates along my ear canal and shoots out sexual urges to every facet of my body? her mind screams at him. Why are your fingers grazing the small of my back, your breath scorching my nape so that moist tendrils exude from my core and erupt like sizzling embers into my— _

'You could always concede defeat, Detective.' he suggests, his voice like honeycombed seduction. 'It will be a relief for both of us, I'm sure. And imagine the outcome? No one would know that you threw in the towel … except for me. And I wouldn't tell a living soul. Imagine. The _re ... lief?_'

He's so close now, she only need tilt her head and offer the throb of her neck, or twist slightly and crash her lips into his. It's what she's wanted. All along. Why deny it now, when she's available, attracted, souped-up on champagne and his hospitality? She hates him. Does she? The passion is so raw, so palpable, she could—

'After all, Beckett. It's highly unlikely that you can win from this point, wouldn't you say?'

Castle squats. Kate senses this rather than sees it, because he's perched at her shoulder, breathing into the space where her hair dusts her neckline, his knees concertina slightly so she feels his thighs brush her butt. He moves his hand to touch her cue, making actions to schmooze behind her, lock her body down to his own, and instruct her about how to use the wood of her stick.

'Being outplayed a little, Detective? Remember how you first helped me to shoot at the range, although I released so very … so _very_ prematurely? If you just loosen up, lean back a lot, and let me — hey _owwwwwwwymurpftb!'_

She's going to run! She's out of here, surrendering bets, going to despise herself the very next day. _Remember that plan, Beckett? _ But when his arrogance surmounts even his own mega-Castle scale and he advises her to concede or be coached by a master, her inner Detective Beckett returns. In droves.

With a swift pivot, she grabs the closest extremity of his body, performs her Rick-twist (aptly named after the first time she had to ear him) and reverses their positions so she's leaning over him and the table, the cue now clattering to the floor. He's a soft target, this burly boy, although Beckett knows he concedes just a little bit in situations like this. He's able with his fists — she's seen that before today — but he'd only use them in some instances.

'Castle!' she snaps, trying not to gape at the gap between his shirt and pants. God, his skin! If there was only some way to taste _that_ without him knowing. 'There's no concession in this game._ Ever!_ Got it! And you _are_ putting me off.'

He wiggles so the shirt rides up a little more. As she's about to reach out and just touch herself a little bit of that divine texture, the light over the bar shuts out and she hears two staff members chuckle and bid them a 'good night'. It seems they are now the only inhabitants of The Old Haunt. Stakes are higher.

_God. It's time to run. Use her cop skills and run!_

'I was only trying to help you. Make it more even. The game,' Castle says, his own weight pushing back against the twist hold she has him in. 'And really, Kate? There's nothing you could do or say that could ever put me off my game, so how can the reverse be true? You're just using that as an excuse. Let's face it. You're losing to me. You don't like it!'

She sees red. Giving one last push to the hold, nuzzling him into his turf as a reaction to the sting of his words, Beckett releases him and stalks to the head of the table. Leaning forward into the position he'd taken before, she squares up eye contact while he rubs his sore spots.

'Nothing _I_ do or say could ever put you off your game, Castle?' she hears herself bite, loving the interrogation room tone to her voice. 'You sure about that? Think very carefully, _Rick._'

'I was only saying that this excuse doesn't hold in The Old Haunt! I can't understand how someone — i.e, _me_ — could put you off a game by simply standing around. Smiling at you. Being pleasant. You're way too oversensitive tonight, Katherine. Perhaps it _is_ time to concede … um,' he grimaces at his sore spots. 'Retire?'

The egotistical, infuriating, enigmatic, charming, sexy, super-inflated son o' a bitch! She's going to make him eat his words. If it's the last thing she does tonight, before heading home to bed_ alone,_ it will be to distract him to the point of incapacitation.

His.

Thinking boldly, bravely, Beckett puts her hand on her hip and revises the egress points of The Old Haunt. Her plan is one she's adopted before, as ancient as the role of 'woman as seductress' throughout the eons of time, but she'll work it quickly, intuitively, then leave.

Excusing herself to visit the bathroom, she instructs Castle to 'leave things exactly as they are' and reassess her form beneath her dress as she walks —

Yeah. She has on a dual-tiered, relatively immodest petticoat under her black number. Nope, she'd never wear it in The Old Haunt unless she was desperate to make a point. Yep, it's sexy, revealing and clingy. Nah, she'd never be naked beneath it, and quietly thanks the gods of sleazy bar pool games for the sense to don underwear and a bra. Always.

Yes, she's idiotic. No, she's not getting herself into anything she can't handle … or perhaps doesn't want to be involved with, anyway. Ok, yep, the thing's racy and red and screams 'take it off, then fuck me on the table.' No, she's not nervous, it's like working a case, working a case in a red, revealing thing …

As she opens the bathroom door and prepares to show Castle just a little bit more of the Beckett character, she has to race for the cold water tap to cool herself down.

It's just that hot in his Old Haunt.

Castle dims the lights real low when she's in the bathroom. He saunters over to the bar, finds a couple of cold, classy glasses — as up market as The Old Haunt will allow — and a fresh bottle of champagne. He's pretty sure she won't drink any more. He's absolutely sure that when she realizes he's set this up, she'll use the bottle over the back of his head.

But it will be so worth it.

It's laughable to suggest that Kate Beckett couldn't do anything to distract him. She distracts him by breathing, by being alive. Even as a cadaver, she'd probably have the capacity to make him as stiff as she was the first time they met Lanie in the morgue.

With that odd thought in mind, Castle walks over to the gaming area, places the glasses and drink on the nearby table and readjusts his shirt. He actually pops one of his lower buttons. Just because. She seems to like this look on him and he likes any look on her.

If anyone needs the champagne, it's him. He's so dead. But it's gonna be a hell of a way to die.


	4. Chapter 4

_Once again, a huge thank you for the lovely words some reviewers have left. It helps a lot, especially when there's a writing slump around. All comments are read and treasured, so thanks._

_We are in a bit of a time jump at the start of this chapter, but never fear. All might be explained. There are about 9 more chapters left._

**Now:**

He wakes up with his face nestled just below her right breast.

Every breath Beckett takes is a gentle reminder of what has happened, of what they've shared. Her puffs reverberate through his cheekbone, mix with his own blood and oxygenate pure love to his heart.

Okay, so she's essentially exhaling carbon dioxide, but that's not as romantic. It's a more unattractive gas. But if they're talking gas exchange, Richard Castle is happy to be Kate Beckett's plant. He's willing to share roots and stamen for the rest of their lives and deflower her petals forevermore if that's what it takes to get the mix of gasses right.

They haven't moved for nearly an hour. The stark white clock on the foreign bedside table tells him that, and the imminent dawn peeping through the curtain reminds him that they haven't left this room for almost eight.

He shifts slightly. The movement causes Beckett to sigh, wriggle a little to the left and realign her hips so she's more comfortable. She has one hand in his hair, cupping the snatch between his ear and neck. The other is strewn somewhere near his shoulder. You'd think that on this particular morning, all of Castle's fears and anxieties would be allayed.

But he's getting ahead of himself. Castle is an author, a plotter of stories. Although he'd like to wax lyrical about the morning after, complete in the knowledge that the night before happened and sparing himself the details of The Old Haunt interlude, it wouldn't be fair. They've come so far, and yet haven't. They've progressed, yet remain inert. It's time to analyze.

Castle sits into a stretch, begrudgingly leaving the warmth of the Beckett nest, as the memories of last night come rushing back, thick and fast and thick again. Had everything been a prelude to this? A poke in the eye to remind him that he should act? That he'd better take a chance rather than simply let his mind conjure all types of luscious things he wants to do to Detective Beckett? Wants to do _with_ Detective Beckett?

So he'd taken that opportunity, had used the atmosphere of The Old Haunt, its charm, the privacy and the romantically-lit ambience … and now he's waking up. Revisiting the intensity and tasting the flurry of red-rock, hardcore recollections.

Because she'd been wearing that ritzy colour. Red for passion, scarlet and crimson and the sizzle of everything he'd ever imbibed in the rawness of pure _red._ She'd come at him from the shadows of the bathroom, direct and flagrant, the material she'd donned a mere excuse for a covering.

In red.

And she'd been resplendent.

**THEN  
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'Nothing _I_ do or say could ever put you off your game, Castle?' she had said, just before striding off to the bathroom. 'You sure about that? Think very carefully, _Rick_.'

Um? Perhaps he can feign a heart attack? A cerebral accident or a hypertensive episode? Something that is quite plausible, given his physical reaction to the situation, but can't be defined as her distracting him from his pool game.

Because she is. Not merely a distraction of the most sensual, gratuitous kind, but she's killing him. Castle doesn't know where to look except _there,_ and everywhere around the Old Haunt screams 'arousal, predation, curvature, sensuality, sex.'

And that's just when he looks at her hair!

_She. Is killing. Him._

Beckett is the definition of human slinky.

She's not sprung, but as soon as she oozes from the bathroom, dressed in little more than a red_ thing,_ Castle is reduced to a topsy-turvy toy that requires pushing to commence forward momentum. He tries to close his mouth, but it continues to gape, over and over again, much like the machinations of the slinky he's watching.

She moves like silk. A silky slinky, or is that a soft, red, slit of fabric that wafts across time and space to get to him?

He doesn't care. Nor does he care to think anymore. About much at all, especially about all the relationships between pool cues and balls and malleable side pockets and this woman in a red_ thing_. All he wants to do is reach out his strongest arm — subconsciously, his biceps contract beneath his disheveled shirt — grasp her in a mindless flurry, and do her.

DO. HER.

It's crass, but at least he's not sharing everything he's thinking regarding the _doing_ of _her_. The diabolical voice in his brain — the one that's throbbing testosterone, adrenalin and soft-porn thoughts around — has been put on filter._ Castle_ filter.

Well he hopes it has.

Oh-kay? And what is this thing she's wearing? Is it part negligee, part lingerie? Castle has ogled his share of beautifully-proportioned women in lace, tulle, even the cover of his book at certain signing festivities, but this? This is something else. Something pure Beckett, protecting modesty (like she protects the community) as it unwraps like a second skin from the top of her breasts to mid-thigh.

But that's where the modesty stops. It's so tight, it leaves very little to his already over-active imagination. So damn tight, it hurts to look at it. If she stumbles, she will fall elsewhere, if she stretches too much, she will tear and he'll tear up. Jesus! If she happens to cough, the tiny sliver of fabric may very well fracture and fall to the floor …

Much like a sausage splitting its own skin.

But he just can't think like this. He cannot afford to think like this!

_Oh Beckett_, the devilish voice knocks on his skull, as she lines up to make her first shot of the new round. _Close the gap. C'mon, I know you want to. I'll be gentle. Remember those soft, pliable hands I promised you? They're here, waiting, ready to spread the entirety of your skin for hours on end, to explore every erogenous zone you're willing to share. To discover those you won't. You know I can. You know I will. And then, when I spend the first two hours, using my tongue to make you scream, my fingers to make you come and holler and plead for goddamn mercy, I'll carry you to my dual-headed shower … you can have either one … the shower heads, I mean, and then you'll be wetter still and–_

'Wow, Castle,' says a voice on the periphery of his sexy sound-scape. It's Beckett, not yet in his dual-headed shower, but right across the table from him, mooched forward and displaying her ample skills. 'You're so quiet. Not like you, is it? Nothing to say at the moment? Cat got your … ?'

Then, she stands. It's a slow, sultry steal of skin and surface and red. Leisurely, she turns away from him, flicks her lustrous, finger-flayed hair over her shoulder and glances back into his eyes. In real time, she arches up on her pumped heels, pivots a fraction and rests her hip into the green velvet cusp of the table. It's so lush. Curved and ripe, making James's Giant Peach look like Martha's most flaccid pancake batch.

She narrows her eyes, puckers her lips. She owns his soul and any other feature of his body she wants.

Castle tries to ignore the bulge, but realizes he owns one of them and concentrates on hers instead. If he uses the table for leverage, he can reach out and cup his hand around that butt, gently pull on that hair so she is forced to lie down on the table, making her entirely accessible to gorge upon.

Then he can rip that red thing. _Shred. _ With teeth and fingers and other sharp things he has at his disposal, but unfortunately, he's not going to get underneath her red thing by using wit alone. And it's not his wit that wants to play anyway.

'Um. About that cat? Has it got your …?'

Propping momentarily, Beckett leans back on her elbow, the cue that was balanced on her knee slipping between her thighs. It's a place where there's really only room for the tautest film of red material and himself. _Oh yes, he'll fit there._ Later, when he splices that fabric from her body and wipes that teasing tone from her lips by crushing his own mouth into her …

_'Tongue?'_

She flicks the word from her lips using the same means by which he wants to return the favour. When he slips his own into her mouth and kisses her till she's sideways, bent outta shape and insane with desire. This line of thought does nothing for his ability to communicate at the moment, and he wonders exactly what question he's responding to. _Cat? Tongue?_

'Um …' he gulps and feels something. Oh yes, there is evidence of his tongue, he thinks._ 'No?'_

For all Castle can tell, the cat probably has his tongue, but it doesn't mean he won't find that pussy, fight to the death and get it back. Just so he can lick him some of that hot Beckett flesh. And then some more.

'You sure the cat hasn't got your tongue, _Rrrrick?'_

She rolls his name around her mouth like he wants to roll her anywhere. She drags the cue into her hold, leaning even further back so she almost touches the ball he's about to play. There must be some sort of sick, sexy penalty for that? Maybe a poke in the pocket once the ball has sunk?

As he's about to try and mention this, she hoists herself upward again, balances forward on the cue as it jabs into the floor and resumes her butt-hugging-the-table position. She zings him the most deviant look over her shoulder, takes the tip of the cue and presses it gently into the skin at the side of her mouth so it makes the slightest indentation. Her lips stay closed, although Castle can tell that his are still apart. He's gaping, but surely not drooling? His mouth has never, _ever_ felt so dry, but there's so much saliva he wants to share. He wonders where it's all going to come from.

When he eventually comes. Um, no! When_ it_ eventually comes. The saliva. Or something. Him. And her. And him. Hopefully, but not necessarily, in that order. Or something.

'Well you're unusually quiet. If the cat doesn't have that tongue of yours, it's time to make a move. Take your best …' she pauses for effect and Castle feels his eyebrow, and other parts of his anatomy, rise further in response. 'Your very _best_ shot … take it ... take it and show _me ..._'

Castle is sure she mutters 'baby' at the end, but there's no way he can prove it. Before he can do anything, she uses the edge of the pool table to close the distance between them, just as he'd prowled toward her earlier in the night. She moves like the ultimate anti-ingénue, all fluid and predatory, the only innocence in her eyes shattered tenfold when she places her cue — as the continuing, sickening prop — in the tiny gap between them and rubs the tip.

For what seems like an age. Rubbing, touching, stroking.

Try as he might, Castle can't ignore the utter disinterest he has in the game of pool. Even with the tattoo viewing at stake, he's almost to the point of surrendering his stance and simply reveling in the opportunity to watch her dance around as seductress in a sexy red thing that's blowing his mind. But once the contest is over, so is the game. They'll return to their Beckett and Castle roles, always on the verge of something, never quite consummating anything.

He won't have a Bone(s) of that!

'If you'll move …'

His voice is puffy to his own ears, so Castle clears his throat, commands his hormones to slather his vocal chords in juice, and tries to reword. 'If you'll moved a little to the left, Beckett, I'll make my move, pocket all my balls and save a bit of tongue for later.'

_That's the way it's done, Rick!_ his nefarious nattering self-congratulates. _Atta boy! And yes, you can still play both versions of the game. You'll whip round this table and win at pool, then drag her down the basement and see the colour of that tattoo before you let your tongue do the talking._

_Ah, Beckett! You'll want it rough and ready, possibly up against the wall or between the wine racks downstairs … God, maybe even on the stairs? Your eyes will engage, and they'll be wide. You'll be in a hurry, it will be fast and furious and you'll want me hot and hard before there's a chance to rub you the way you're working that cue._

_But never fear, Detective. It'll be slow. So ongoing and on-coming and on-top and honest, you'll go spare. And Castle will be there at the climax. All two of them, then four … then the second hour, until you get tired. He'll let you sleep, but only within hand and mouth-reach, until the time you move again and there'll be begging and gnashing of teeth—_

'I'll move, Castle,' she echoes. 'It won't help your chances.'

'There are no chances in a game of pool,' he smiles, rounding out his own ass so he can position himself to address the ball. 'Only winners.'

'And sinners?'

He coughs out a chortle, loving the fact that he's more articulate now. Looser. 'Depends, Beckett. Whatever gets you though the night! It's alright. Oh, and whatever wins the game for me when the stakes are this high!'

'And they _are_ high! But believe me. There's no way you're seeing my tatt—'

Just as Castle gets balanced, comfortable and prepared to take his shot in the two-thigh widths space that Beckett has given him, he feels something. He's about to pocket his fourth-last ball, set up a second shot to leave him three — then two balls — on the table, and solidify the win within the next ten minutes.

_'Hey!'_

He's too committed to the stroke to withdraw easily, and as he watches his white ball hit the correct ball and plunder into the pocket — exactly how he planned — Castle is dismayed that by pulling out too quickly, the white ball hasn't repositioned where it was expected for his next shot.

_She'd touched his ass._ He's really only dismayed that she's taken her hand away so soon. He doesn't give a Nikki Heat about his ball on the table! The butt cup has been the highlight of his night. Even the highlight of his life, thus far.

Castle turns to catch her in the act of checking out where her palm has left a hot imprint on his butt. It hadn't been a quick pinch, more like a flattened feeling of 'oh, yeah, I'm cupping the warmth and curve beneath' and he wants more where that came from. Right now.

'Good shot, Castle, but your next one is going to be so, _so_ hard …'

_So hard. In so many, many ways._

She presses in towards him and there's barely an inch between the red streak covering her breasts and his shirt. 'Your next move is going to be that … much …'

Beckett reaches into the tiniest gap and closes it. She runs her fingers along the vertical line of his shirt, flicks at the third-lowest button and renders it undone. Like he is. Like he desperately wants his fly to be — opened and undone. _Out._ There's only two tiny circles of plastic holding his crinkled, untucked shirt together now, and at the moment he's _sure_ she's about to pull it apart, she ducks beneath his hemline instead.

'It's gonna be … that much … harder.'

Again she flirts her fingernails along the skin beneath his shirt. Again, his breath is stolen and stored at the back of his throat for later on — when he shouts 'take me, Beckett! to the rafters of The Old Haunt. Again, her hands are on him, but this time, she takes things lower. And slower. Torturously so.

Castle is distracted by everything. By the feel of her nails against his abdomen, frizzling down, down 'neath his navel, playing in the happy hair just above his belt line, strumming with the ease of a guitarist as she finds some horizontal rhythm against the cutesy part of his belly … then stopping.

It doesn't tickle. It provokes.

'Kate …?' he smokes, still looking at her hand beneath his shirt, focusing on the image of her pale skin against the dark backdrop of his pants and the urgency of the strained material below. _'Kate?'_

'What?'

She's looking at him, sounding as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and all of a sudden he wants to _be_ a butter, spread well, and eaten.

'I thought you said that I couldn't put you off your game,' she says, in full tease mode. 'That I couldn't_ do_ anything that would distract you.'

Castle nearly bites through his bottom lip with the effort it takes to resist her. He backs away, she follows him. He retracts his shirt over her hand and pivots a half turn, she makes seductive moves around his back, whispering warmth into his ear until she can get into his personal front space again. He even places his own palm over her roaming fingers to still them and she moves both their hands to his belt buckle.

_Fuck!_

He's struggling to make sense. 'I'm taking my next move, Detective Beckett,' he skims out, teeth gritted, heart pumping a _staccato_ into his scrotum. 'If you'll just step away …'

Using his larger girth and some nimble footwork, Castle moves onto the table, sizes up his shot and makes the quickest draw in the history of premature ball play. It works quite well, not his best pool stroke ever, but he is one ball closer to winning the bet and seeing the tattoo.

He's in a rush now. The goals are clear. Finish the job, be declared the victor, slowly — very, very slowly — press Beckett up against the wall, peel away that red thing she's nearly not-wearing and ravage her.

_The tattoo viewing can go to hell. This is all about the touching and feeling rather than needing to see body art._

He tries not to seem too smug as he turns from his successful shot. She's at his shoulder, but as he manipulates his body so they're locked again into some front-on-front goodness, his own hip pushed into the table, she's grinning too.

'Nice to see you're happy that I'm one stroke away from winning, Beckett. Now if you'll move a little bit further—'

In the microsecond it takes him to realize that she's putting both hands on his belt — her fingers slipping beneath — she performs some sneaky smut-police maneuver that results in her mouth frying against his. It's a different kiss than the last time. Fuller, more profound, and as he works to deepen his response by shaping his lips, sliding his tongue in to meet her blatant 'come on' call, he's on the way to implementing that intended (very slow) love-making plan he has conjured for Kate Beckett.

It starts with him letting her kiss him as ruthlessly as she wants. For as long as she wants. _Um, what plan?_ his pineal gland asks his evil brain, because even though the pineal gland is responsible for sleeping, Castle has always thought it must have something to do with his penis. _She's hot, she obviously wants it fast. Give it to her, Ricky boy. Slow Shmow. Leave that until your first anniversary. You know you can do hot and hard real well, Rickster—_

'Kate?' he asks, pulling back in the traditional 'man-gives-woman-he-is-crazy-about-the-cooling-off-option' that is a once-only deal in this situation. Castle is gentleman enough to stop if she red-lights him, but rogue enough to want green lights the entire way along the Beckett intercourse …

Um, he means Beckett inter_change._

She's watching his lips through shuttered lids and she's so intoxicating he wants to cry out. As beautiful as any woman he's ever seen, as hot as the front of his boxers on a Beckett-kissing day. He feels her stifle the tiniest of sentences she's not ready to share. He notices a sensual quirk to her mouth — one he quickly reflects, because hey? It's one helluva joyful night if this is what they're gonna be doing — and he dips his own head to encourage her to say something. To do _something._

Without another word, she shoves her hands into the front of his shirt, grips the opened material in double-fists and pulls him roughly towards her. It's quick, jolting, and Castle closes his eyes, readies for their mouths to crash and their bodies to meld in a pre-naked foreplay of awesome.

_Something does crash_, but there is no awesome. Instead of hearing a rush of sensuality, longing, heatwaves and the white noise of sex, Castle detects a shout of pain. It's not his own. It's come from the fast, furious interface between Beckett and the end of the cue stick that stands between them both!

As she draws him in, the cue clips at her face and her most vulnerable point. Instead of Castle preparing to penetrate her red material in a fast, furious flurry, or create an environment of want and wet and wild, he can only comfort. He does witness penetration and blood, but the only seeping moisture is from the cue-hit injury to her eye. The only wildness he hears is her profane language as the impact occurs and the only begging is for drugs as soon as the paramedics arrive at the scene.

'I thought you were heading for a poke tonight, guys,' says Esposito, once he's told that Beckett is fine and that Castle is staying at the hospital for the remainder of the pivotal_ first 24 hours._ 'I just didn't think it would be in your eye.'

Castle smiles. Beckett doesn't. Both her eyes are padded against the light.

'That's some weird shit, bro,' Javier whispers, careful not to let Beckett hear.

Castle wakes up with his face nestled below her right breast. Just a pity the hospital room doesn't have the same ambience as The Old Haunt.

His previous ravaging and slow, sexual goals have been booted out of the park. According to Ryan, the only visions he and Beckett need to focus on is getting her well before the Kevin's nuptials in two-week's time. 'The reception place will have a pool table, dude,' he whispers to Castle, careful not to let Beckett hear.

'Although Jenny won't like any weird shit, bro,' adds Esposito, quietly.


	5. Chapter 5

_Hope you're enjoying this one. It gets a bit more adult in theme and slightly more cracky. I suppose I should have warned readers that, yep, it's a bit of a tease-fest ; )_

_maybe that's half the fun. Thanks for reading. _

**NOW:**

The scary possibilities of detached retinas and permanent blindness in one eye have been ruled out. Kate is heavily doped up on a mixture of sedatives and pain killers, both her eyes temporarily bandaged while her cue-mangled one heals.

There is something wrong with her cornea. 'Impact injury, quite common, should feel a lot better in two days, keep both eyes patched for the first 48 hours, heavy painkillers during that time, then cut pack to regular analgesics. Rest, relax and give the body a chance to recover.'

They give her something really strong in the hospital. She can tell. It's the same feeling she had when she broke her wrist during the takedown of a particularly heavy suspect, the same chillax sensation she had when she was treated for a laceration wound to her thigh at the start of her career. The same bubble of_ ohhhhhh … wheeeeee._

Kate is so very, very breezy. Totally sublime and warm, and if she wasn't so tired, she'd feel so alive and so very, very ready. Ready to broach the Castle quandary, to show him the tattoo, to slip out of the red she's wearing (or perhaps it's white now?) to demand he take her back to her apartment or The Old Haunt, or somewhere flat, so she can just DO HIM.

DO. HIM.

Or she'll let him do her. Just … yes … _do._

Sure, it's crass, but she's so damn euphoric … oh, then so damn tired … but a little euphoric (a lot really) … oh, no, but she's never been this tired in her life.

She should sleep. Or maybe, if her eye gets better quickly — like _now_ quickly — she might get up and dance with him. Some sort of Samba or sexy tango-ette, or even a naked belly dance? Nuh-uh, she's so weary, that she wants to curl up in his lap, let him wrap his arms around her. She's got the energy to whisper in his ear about what she wants him to do. Where she wants him to put his hands. Starting with under the thing she's wearing now. She's sure that there's no underwear. Down there, so if she dances, yeah … um ...

If only she had the vigour. It comes in waves. The vigour too ...

She does have it sometimes, just not right at the moment. It's not much different to the feeling of post-sleepy sex — you know, a gulping, gasping climax and then being too tired to have a celebratory cigarette. Not that either of them smoke. Although Castle has been known to be smokin' … she thinks, and maybe he might make her cry out for a cigar by the time they're through?

Kate had it all planned out before the cue strike. Distract. Seduce — just a tiny bit — kiss. Fool around a little. Kiss, yeah because that sensation is never getting old. She can still feel the intense exchange— the latest one at The Old Haunt — on the roof of her mouth, as she'd gone for the plundering onslaught rather than an afternoon make-out session. And his tongue had been right there. Pity his cue had been too.

Beckett knew exactly when she planned her exit strategy. Sometime between rendering him unable to play another ball and the moment she'd grown tired of the kissing. So, in her drug-addled mania, she predicts it might have been sometime after … um … _nev-ah_…

She sighs. It hurts her eye. Pity she can't use it at the moment.

He's pretty to look at. He is, and Kate likes the stubble even though he doesn't wear it as much as he used to when they first met. She wants to ask him to go without shaving for a week, then come to her apartment and DO HER. But when she's got more energy. When she doesn't feel as though they've already _done it,_ but she hasn't got the pithy fullness to prove it. Or the endorphin high, or an eyeful of his best bits on display after they've just had astonishing, pool table sex.

She was gonna leave The Old Haunt before it got to that. It had been her intention, she tries to tell herself now.

But yeah. He's pretty. It's a pity she can't see him. She can smell him, and she wonders if analgesics heighten your senses or whether being unable to see for a while means the ability to recognize his scent has intensified. Like a visually-impaired person who can detect everything relating to taste, tasting _him_, touch? Taste. Of him. His taste.

Oy, oy, oy, her mind whispers. Who the fuck cares? All she knows is that he still smells incredible after a night out. It's his expensive aftershave, the way it clings to his clothes and tickles the inside of her Castle Awareness Metre, making her more aware of him.

She might even be a little bit addicted to it. His scent, she means. And his touch, but it hasn't happened that much, to naked skin, oh and then his open mouth … on the inside of her wrist. Why the hell hasn't he done that again? Oh, and the guy … and yeah, she's had a Castle Awareness Metre from day one … and she's very, very addicted, in a breezy, cheesy way ...

_It's the drugs speaking, right?_

She knows he's asleep. After Esposito and Ryan called in during an early morning drive-by to check the facts Castle had conveyed over the phone when she was first treated, Rick retreats to a chair in the corner and snores softly. It's cute, but she'd prefer him nestled against her like he was before. All warm and hairy, snug against the underside of her breast … she has this sudden urge to stick her finger in his ear and see what happens.

It's the painkiller. She can't actually _see_ anything, but she's all smelling sensation and ears. Oh, and tongue. She can really, really, really feel her tongue.

Kate heard everything Ryan and Esposito said during the dawn visit. About the poke they predicted, although not to her eye, about the pool table at Ryan's wedding and the mock interrogation they gave Castle when they thought she'd gone back to sleep.

_'So, Mr Castle, could you tell us your understanding of the term 'eye sex'?'_

_'Mr Castle? You and Detective Beckett were in the process of playing with balls when she received the poke? Is it true you used the cue to hide your erectile dysfunction?'_

_'Do you refute the claim that Detective Beckett unwittingly shed her clothes prior to the poke? That you coerced her into her underwear, she saw red and you penetrated her orifice with your … your … weapon?'_

Ryan and Esposito had dissolved into waves of laughter, to the point where a nurse had come in and escorted Castle and the dynamic duo outside. There had been a smile in Castle's voice, too, but Kate waited until they were gone from the room to allow herself a grin. When her quiet humour had overridden the early effect of the painkiller and caused her eye to complain, she had quietened down. She hadn't even offered a smile when the boys came back to say goodbye and whisper some final words of advice to Castle.

That must have been several hours ago. Her woozy detective mind buzzes with the increased noise round the wards, the clash of breakfast cutlery and hasty footsteps as an indication that the night is surely over. And still, her date sleeps.

'Castle?'

'Huh?'

He senses her calling him in his dream and she's wearing red. The sausage-skin fabric has a small tear at the front, separating her cleavage as perfectly as if an anatomical line had been driven between her breasts and delineated.

He's drooling. It's like Pavlov's dogs watching the juiciest bone being plumped full of sexual steroids and it being wafted in front of canine noses. But not. She's a woman, not a bone ...

Oh, and she's in white. He knows she's in white because she asked the nurse to help her change, and okay? So he'd peeked a little.

More like a _lot._

'Castle? Come over here. I want you.'

'Oh, um …'

He's up. He's as erect as he's ever going to be at this time of the morning, after sleeping most of the night in the avenue between her breast and diaphragm, then most of the dawn in a hospital chair. Castle stands to attention as if a drill sergeant has bugled a wake up call into his ear.

'Yes? Yes?'

'C'm here, Castle. It's time to wake up.'

Beckett's words are gentle, but he can also detect an undercurrent of something else. Not grumpiness or morning moodiness as much as a playfulness. Highly unlikely given the amount of pain she's in.

'You need something?' he asks, taking the three steps to her bedside, attempting to straighten himself up as he does. He only manages to run his hands over his face, reminding him of the first kiss they ever shared. Best not to go there. She can't see him anyway, so he sits down in a heap opposite the hollow where he'd once slept.

'Just wanna talk.'

It strikes Castle that she sounds slurred. It's really un-Beckett-like and utterly adorable. All he wants to do at that very moment is sit next to her, push her hair away from her forehead and look at her while she has both her eyes patched. He'd rather be staring into her eyes and telling her things that she mightn't know about how extraordinarily sexy she is, but fate has dictated otherwise. Suddenly her lips are the window to her soul. He wants to open the curtains with his tongue.

He wonders just how sick it is to have erotic fantasies about lying next to an injured woman, walking fingers beneath her hospital gown and making the windows to her soul part in the process of panting. _Probably highly weird._

'Why you 'sleep over there?' she asks, breaking his chain of thought. Her gorgeous lisping only draws more attention to her mouth and Castle has to stop himself from kissing her better and touching her well … not touching her _well_, as such. More like touching her so she _gets_ well …

Like the sausage skin, this type of thinking is getting him nowhere fast.

'I thought you'd be more comfortable with me over there,' he says, pitching his words low. 'The on-call doctor mentioned you would probably be discharged sometime tonight, um … do you remember that, Kate?'

She's distracting him with her smile.

'I 'member _everythin''_

'Oh?'

Without much more thought, he takes her hand in his. She's warm and fuzzy as well as woozy, and if Castle was more rogue than gentleman, he could take full advantage of the entire situation. But it's Beckett. He wants Beckett whole and well and leading him by the end of his cue.

'I know … I won. In the end, Castle. So? You ready …?'

She trails off, so sleepy and malleable, he wants to jump into the scratchy, plastic-wadded hospital bed and snug her. Before he can do or say anything, he's surprised to feel her tug firmly on his hand, encouraging him closer in a part-jolt, part-pull. Castle uses his strength and weight to maintain balance. It doesn't stop Beckett putting her other hand in his hair, flicking the back and fingering the edge where it razors into the skin of his neck.

He shivers.

'You ready?' she repeats, so tired that her question comes out as part-sigh.

'Um … Kate? I really want to say _always_. I'm always ready, okay, but I don't know what you're asking me at the moment … Kate? _Kate?_'

She's guided him to a spot where his lips are occupying the same square inch of air as her own. Castle can feel the tingle of her breath, the moisture of the air she's exhaling and all he has to do is close his eyes, absorb her X factor, and _feel his way ..._

'Ready to admit I distracted ya? Las' night?'

He should kiss her. Fuse his mouth into hers, ignore the voice of his conscience that tells him about the indecency of wanting to initiate foreplay in a hospital room with a cop who can't see. But her fingers keep playing with his hair and her mouth keeps taunting him with graphically suggestive quips.

'I'm ready for a rematch,' he says, watching the reaction of her lips through crossed-eyes. They're so damned close, it's difficult to do anything but shut off his vision and explain himself via more physical means. 'Maybe when you can see straight? Ryan and Jenny's wedding? Although you might play better with your eyes patched.'

She laughs. It's more like a _faffy,_ breathy thing that puffs from her lips and settles on his own. God, she is more desirable than ever. Part vulnerable, part determined, entirely cosy and still and throaty. He wants her with every bone in his body — his protective bone, his soulful bone, his trusty bone o' sexuality that's so often pointed in her direction.

'Oh Casl … can't wait 'til then.'

Without warning, she uses her non-hair stroking hand to unfold the hospital covering on the opposite side to where Castle is sitting. She's so lethargic, her effort to lift her left leg takes several tries and she persists even though he tells her it doesn't matter.

'You don' wanna see?' she huffs, clasping her thigh and dragging it up and out of the sheet as though she's lifting tonnage. 'Don' worry. I'll collect too.'

Castle attempts to reconcile the Beckett who wouldn't let him look at her when her apartment was on fire, with this woman who wants to show him her naked leg. Or the person who threw down the gauntlet at The Old Haunt. Or the feline that sleeked from the bathroom resplendent in red. Who is _this?_ Flashing her legs, ensuring the hospital gown is ruffled and askew, lifting her foot as high in the air as she's physically able?

_It must be the drugs._ If she's so damned frisky and abiding when she's receiving painkillers, perhaps he'll order a shipload for the wedding night. Um, he means the _Ryan and Jenny_ wedding night.

The tattoo is surprisingly intricate and sits on the inside of her ankle. It's wrong, but he finds it oddly arousing to have an excuse to move closer and find out exactly what it is.

'It's cool,' he says, playing for time and using the fact she has both eyes covered to visually walk the extent of her leg. If he arches inward just a little more, he'll be able to see waaaaay up the mid-thigh length of her hospital gown to the spot where her skin meets the sheet and is not covered by anything.

Pure commando. And he will be one dead guerilla.

'It's the Tree of Life,' she gets out, in between small intakes of breath. 'Cool, hey?'

'It is.'

He spends a moment looking at the black inked branches, the series of intertwining roots, and makes a mental note to ask Kate why she chose that particular symbol when she was Alexis age — if that part of the story is even true. Same with the navel ring. He's wondering if it'd be unethical to ask for a viewing of that while she's in the skimpy, revealing hospital gown.

'I know. You're lookin'. And I don't have energy … to tell you. Stop.'

He smiles despite being caught in the act. He's never met a woman who can wear a white shift, a double set of eye bandages and still be so incredibly sexy. And funny and explicitly gorgeous. He wants her with another one of his bones, although he berates himself for admitting it. Possessive bone. He wants her. For himself, and nobody else, ever.

'I'm so light, Casl. Are you? And I'm so gooooood. Feel so good.'

He stifles the urge to bury his head in her shoulder, lift her from the bed and swing her around in a fit of giggles. He stops himself ruffling her hair and pinching her cheek. He focuses on what she'll feel like when the strong painkillers wear off.

'How about a bit more rest, Kate. The doctor will be around—'

'No time for it. For rest. Time for me to do you.'

_Oh, my fucking God, wha?_

Castle laughs, even though the collar of his untucked shirt threatens to suddenly choke him. He pulls the hospital bedding up over those lazy, hazy legs, pats the top of her sheet under her chin and rests back in his favourite spot. 'How's your eye feeling, Beckett?' he asks, unable to take his gaze away from those lips, unable to think of anything else but her last comment.

'Stop. Talking. Now,' she floats out, restless in the bed. 'Lips here.'

Castle blinks five times in succession. Surely this is some sort of hallucination bought on by broken sleep and the stress of Kate poking her eye out on his pool cue? This can never happen. He must be in some sort of alternate universe for the sexually deprived, watching footage of a gangly teenager imagining the hottest chick in the school is flashing him and asking him to the drive-in.

But he's not gangly — last time he looked — and Beckett is the hottest chick in the precinct, but she's not offering to flash her breasts anytime soon. _Or is she?_

_Lips here?_ What the hell does that even mean, in a world where a cop isn't drugged off her face and her eyes are both working?

'C'mon, Rick. Don't portend 'bout that other time. You want to … I want. You lost … the bet.'

'No, no, no, no, Beckett,' he says. He immediately wants to break his own jaw for disagreeing with her. 'The game is a stalemate, and you showed me the tattoo because you felt like it. Neither of us lost. Or won.'

He watches a range of emotions massage her lips. Humour, fatigue, confusion, lightness, extreme weariness, drug-induced aphrodisia. 'It's only … one, tiny … kiss. I watch your mouth when we work, you know? Always. Your lips ... mouth ... I always wanna … do it.'

Oh, Christ. The analgesics seem to be acting as some sort of truth serum as well, and Castle has neither the heart nor the desire to deny her. But it's not Kate Beckett talking to him. It's almost as bad as if she was drunk and tempting him to take advantage of her, and there's no way Castle would ever do that.

'Just c'mere. Closer. Not gonna bite you.'

_Yeah. Right._

'How about you get some rest and we'll see about discharge—'

She initiates everything, or so his conscience would have him believe. From the pressure behind his skull, to way she draws him downward, to the dictation of the type of kiss she intends to have. It's a hospital kiss. In that, if she sucks on his bottom lip or nibbles the side of his mouth any more, he's going to need a visit to the ER. If she murmurs against his lips again, he'll need his heart defibrillated. If she plunges her tongue, retracts the taste, then laves it over again … Castle's going to have a stroke.

_But she does._ Stroke. Her hands take over when his mind shuts down.

Kate has manipulated him so he's propped on his elbows, the only weight over her body is where her lips are working and stupefying him dead. If that's literally possible. He's sure it's not, but with Beckett, anything goes. Her hands amble downwards from his hair. They find the untucked shirt, the top of his boxers, and her fingers dance inside as far as they can go.

Someone moans. It's lucky Castle's not attached to a heart monitor. It'd be so erratic, right about now. Flat-lining, peaking, spiking, spurting … and that's with Beckett's eyes patched so he can't drown in them, it's with the hospital bedding between them so he can't tongue her skin, it's with them fully clothed so he can't …

'So frust-trating,' she groans, as she attempts to get further inside the back of his boxer shorts. She doesn't have enough reach to grab his butt, so she amuses herself by brushing the base of his spine with her fingertips, mimicking the lower abdominal action she'd worked by the pool table at The Old Haunt.

A random thought enters Castle's head. For as much as he's primed his reputation as a rich, lascivious playboy, a charmer and master of the female sex, he's putty. Beckett has reduced him to a ball of moveable, flexible stuff and he'd be happy to spend the rest of their days readjusting his body position to accommodate her.

Ignoring the possible damage he might do to hospital equipment and her eye dressing, Castle moves up so that his elbows brace either side of her head. He responds to her smile and immediate grab for his naked ass by kissing her neck and working his lips across to the corner of her mouth.

'You okay?' he asks, before she searches out his mouth with her own and demands another kiss. He's about to inquire if she wants to stop and save her energy, but by the time her tongue collides with his teeth and he's scooped up into another bout of Beckett bliss, he can't remember what he was going to say.

She eventually drags her mouth away and strains towards his ear in a hot, harried whisper. 'Tired. But also …? Great. Kissing ... great ...'

He presses a string of kisses along her hairline, smoothing back strands that have been flicked forward and trying to resist the urge to tell her to continue placing her hands wherever she desires. In an action that has Castle near euphoria, Kate pushes her head back into the pillow. The grin on her face tells him she's either really high or loving the feel of his butt.

He hopes it's the second. If it's the first, he hopes she remembers. He closes his eyes and concentrates on imprinting his skin sensation into her memory bank.

'So? All bet's off?'

She's tired. He can tell from the slight slump of her body, the less rangy movements of her hands beneath his boxers. Castle inhales her scent and bends his head for a final, gentle delve of lips, but she uses the opportunity to continue to make-out with the earnestness of a weary, horny teenager the morning after an all-night date.

The clatter of a breakfast tray behind the curtain tells them they're about to have company, so he comes up for air and places the back of her hand to his lips.

'Bets are still on the table. Ryan and Jenny's wedding, remember?' He doubts she does.

'Um … no,' she whispers, taking their joined hands and pressing his fingers to her lips. 'I collected. Same ... you.'

'I collected, yes. Love your tattoo,' Castle parries, taking the hands away from her mouth and finding the inside of her wrist, where the spider web of veins marks the spot of an obvious erogenous zone. 'You haven't yet.'

As he presses his tongue against the inside of her arm, Kate squirms. She relinquishes the tug-of-hands war for a moment, stifling a groan against the edge of her bed linen while Castle grins against her skin.

The breakfast tray bludgeons into the scene like a rude awakening. It's flashy and loud, but Castle maintains his spot while the hospital worker shuffles around and officiates over the plastic food. Castle is sure he hears the staff member _hrrumph_, but he doesn't care. He's thinking about spooning food into Beckett's mouth, asking her to stay in the loft while she recovers — she won't be able to see well enough to get dressed— and wonders whether sex is recommended for eye healing.

'Oh …,' she shifts upwards slightly, bending her head to indicate he comes closer. 'I collected. Wanted to feel me … some of that … you know?' She squeezes his fist. 'For longest while … at work ... over the years. And fin-lea done. You didn' let me down … Castle … '

It takes all her energy, but after she delivers the final decree in the pool table collection of wagers, Beckett cackles quietly and flops back on her pillow. She uses his shock to withdraw her hand from his tongue-search and reaches it up to touch his face. Instinctively, he nuzzles into her palm.

'Love playing, Castle. Better get your fast car ready.'

_Oh. He will._

Castle is just about to inform her that she never, ever has to win a bet at _anything_ to have access to his body when he hears her mutter something about him 'being easy' and her feeling 'soooooo good.'

'So? This is what you two do following a kinky night of poking parts and ball play?' Lanie erupts into the room, gives Castle the Dr Parish look and consults Beckett's chart. 'You okay, sweetie? Did you forget which orifice the wood should penetrate? _Shesh._ Told ya you need to come down to the lab and we'd get out some of those old anatomy books.'

Kate laughs. It's hyper and tired and strained at the edges.

'And gawd! By the look of your chart, you're nice n' high too. Bet you're feeling fine, hon?' Lanie continues, wandering to the opposite side of the bed from Castle. 'Maybe you both need to come down to the Parish Headquarters of Later Life Sexual Instruction? Both a little rusty, it seems?'

Castle clears his throat. For the tenth time this morning, his pants feel too tight, his groin feels too hot and his heart beat too erratic. 'Just an unfortunate accident. Some might say that Beckett was so … overwhelmed by my prowess, it left her unable to see straight.'

The glare he gets from Lanie is reflected by the WTF-angles of Kate's chin, jawline and lips. It seems that painkillers don't dampen down the sisterhood response when they consider something not that funny.

'Too soon?' he asks, but is cut off by Lanie's instructions. She lectures about eye injury, she reiterates the importance of rest — 'and that means, you two hotties, that blood pressure and heart rate need to remain at resting levels' — and she tells them both exactly how it is.

'All things considered, it'll be better for me to come stay at Kate's place. Help her through the next week. Keep her rested and fed—'

'She could come to the loft,' interrupts Castle.

'She could,' agrees Lanie, 'but I'm not going to touch her breasts or try to get in her pants.'

Castle sits up as though a fire has been lit under his scrotum. 'Neither am I,' he starts, his indignation at crossroads with the highly aroused feeling he associates with that particular image.'

'Right?' says Lanie, arching her eyebrow. 'She's gonna recover a lot quicker with me—'

'Whadda bout work?' asks Beckett.

'Got some time owing, sweetie,' says Lanie, throwing Castle the no-argument look. 'And like I told you before today, I don't sit around at work waiting for the next vic.'

Castle sighs and is about to ask the dominant Dr Parish about visiting hours at the sanatorium when Lanie reaches out to take Kate's hand and winks at Castle. 'We've got a special day in just under two weeks. We need you rested and raring to go for that, Kate. Okay?'

Castle nods in resignation and takes Beckett's other hand. 'I'll have the Ferrari ready, too. A bit of a get well motivation? Right, Detective?'

'Yeah,' Beckett answers, on the verge of slumber. 'Need to get better. For … for … my wedding. Night.'

Lanie splutters. 'Oh, sweetie. I'm gonna remind you of every little thing you say while on these battlefield-strength painkillers.'

'You don't know everything she's said already, Dr Parish,' Castle leers, as he tries to include himself in the sisterhood humour, if only for a second. If only for _now_, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows he's on the outer.

'And Castle?' says Lanie, her face full of mock disapproval. 'You might think I don't know everything now, but while I'm under Beckett's roof, I will be the ears, and the EYES, of ALL. Is that understood?'

He fidgets, losing eye contact with Lanie, wishing he had his life on fast-forward so he could speed his way to a Ferrari drive on Beckett's wedding night.

'And there's absolutely no unsupervised visiting,' Lanie laughs. 'A bride can't be seen until her wedding day.'

With Beckett asleep, Castle has no chance of stacking his side for a winnable rebuttal against Lanie. He intends to grump about in his loft, like a celibate hunchback with a chip on his shoulder, until the day he emerges. He'll remove the patching from his beloved's eyes, render her speechless with his sexy demeanor, and make her his own.

Pity the wedding day is supposed to be about Ryan and Jenny.


	6. Chapter 6

_Hi again, and thanks once more to kind readers and reviewers. Just to clarify, this is an oldish fic, posted here at request. I'm very thankful to purplangel (never get sick of reading reviews, m'dear!) for the encouragement and am very grateful to those who have shared their words of feedback. There's about another week's worth of chappies to post and I'll keep doing that round this time each day.  
><em>

_Happy Thursday, all._

**NOW**

She misses him like a hole in her head.

Then Lanie tapers the battlefield analgesics, and Kate remembers she's got seven holes in her skull and one of them throbs with the cadence of _Castle, Castle, Castle ..._

She wants him, she doesn't want him, she's attracted, she hates him, she wants to beat him at pool, she wants to fuck him in a pool, she wants to kiss her cuffs on him, she needs to cuff her kiss … Oh, _God_. It's all too hard.

She misses him like a hole in her heart.

Then her good eye is uncovered, she's still confined to her bed or the couch — 'the only places I can make sure you're gonna rest, honey' — and memories come flooding back. Somewhere below her pain threshold, Kate recalls she has a heart. It contracts forcibly whenever her thoughts turn to him. Then she gets confused and wishes the battlefield painkillers were still available upon demand.

Kate has too much time to think.

It's not like she can read the newspaper. It's not like she can watch reruns of 'Temptation Lane' or some soft porn on HBO to help her deal with the erotic thoughts boinking her brain. The soapie will sting her eyes with its sudsy storylines and flowery scent. The explicit scenes on cable will only contribute to the blood pressure issue and remind her about the things that are playing on her mind.

Stuff about Castle.

It lurks in the blind spot, a place where Kate can't quite discern reality from fiction. The words she hears her own voice uttering, about 'lips' and 'here' and 'watching his mouth while they work'? _Did she really say that?_ The tingly imprint of his hands and kiss? A vague notion that he may have been lying on top of her in the hospital bed? The risque memory of _finally_ running her fingers over the butt she's been looking at for the past couple of years … or is that _r_ears?

The worrying idea that Castle was assuming a near-missionary position and letting his ass be fondled at her own_ request?_

If these things happened, what the hell had she been thinking? And why on earth had she chosen a time to do all these sensual stunts when she now doesn't have the capacity to differentiate the truth from the haze behind her eyes?

The questions bobble her brain and fondle her fuzz — that's the animated noise in her head not giving her any reprieve from Castle thoughts while she has so much time on her hands.

She sighs. She's doing a lot of that. Something to do to fill in the moments.

When he doesn't contact her on the first day post-release, Kate adopts the Beckett veneer and snuggles in the small battalion of drugs that Lanie allows, telling herself that Castle is a hyperactive child who can't even keep his hands off the toys in a hospital ward. She has a moment where she admits to herself that this is _one_ developed child, with awesome whisker pores and deep-throated pitch and a full set of large sunny bits that are available at the flick of a finger, or a touch of his dial …

_For chrissake, NO! _ It's better not to go near the 'large sunny bits' at this stage. They just might keep her up all night — _Or is it day?_ — whatevs the case, Kate needs to focus on something apart from being kept up. By him, during her day and night because his stamina is sure to be as addictive as his voice. His smirk, his damn Castleness.

But how else to spend this time? On his hands? Um, on _her_ hands?

For the better part of an hour, Beckett tries to itemize all the homicides she has solved since her rookie year. It leads back to thoughts of a man in sunglasses, wearing shaggy hair, damn fine eyelashes, encouraging her to 'spank me'. This was_ before_ he turned her life into fifty stages of chaos. _Damn you, Castle!_ Even the radio plays love songs with lurid sexual anthems, evoking spasmodic memories of moving next to Castle on the dance floor and wanting him to touch her everywhere, with every part of his body, to every corner of her orgasm earth.

He calls her on day two. By then, her hearing is so sensitive, the vibration of his voice causes glacial melting in all areas south of Erogenous Mountain.

By day four, when she and Castle are in regular (secret) contact via voicemail and phone, the analgesics of aphrodisia have been whittled away to the barest sliver of wood from the once generous piece of trunk. In other words, she might as well be swallowing a placebo and padding the inside of her eye patch with nails. When she complains to Lanie, her roomie — actually,_ guest_ roomie — tells her that the feeling is due to the weaning period, and 'everything will be alright come tonight.'

'You say that like I'm going to get lucky or something,' Beckett snaps, her body tense and her words terse. She doesn't want to snark at the messenger, but Beckett's glad she doesn't have her work pistol by her bed. Lanie might be on her way to the morgue without being called up for duty.

'Hey,' coos her friend, sitting on the bed and taking her hand. 'This is necessary. The next eight hours are gonna be the hardest, but I'm giving you something to take the edge off.'

'I thought the doctor said it would be _better_ in 48 hours! It's been _four_ damn days!'

Lanie adjusts the weight on the mattress, plumps the grump's pillow gently and makes soothing patterns against the Beckett forehead. 'I know you don't wanna hear this right now, but it'll take the time it needs.'

There's so much pent-up frustration on Kate's face, Lanie can't help but smile. 'Just think of this downtime as the universe's way of preventing you from getting burnt-out. Oh, and I mean in your _job_, not with constant Castle contact. They say that absence can make the heart grow … hotter?'

_'Arrrrgggggh'._

Kate's cry of annoyance drains the tension from her body. It rocks the bed, allowing the air to clear and Beckett to lapse into a tiny snort of laughter. This sound is so at odds with her patching and drug withdrawal, both women dissolve into a fit of hysteria that bespeaks lack of sleep, pain, worry and the wandering of minds that are normally occupied with intense work situations.

'Speaking of Castle,' says Lanie, the fastest to recover from the breathy laughing fit. 'You haven't quite told me whether—'

The sound of her cell interrupts any chance that Kate has to confess her confusion about what actually went _down_ with Castle. Ah, she'd remember if that happened, surely?

The previous voicemail messages and cell conversations with Castle have amounted to him establishing her state of health, and her asking him about work. There's been nothing remotely intimate. It's as though anything mentioned about asses or tongues or fingers stroking firm flesh will cause the phone to implode and genital areas to shrink and wither.

It's their Voldemort situation.

'Yeah, speaking _of_ Castle,' Kate says, with a grim resolve to stop Lanie answering the call.

'How'd ya know it was him without checking the caller ID?'

Lanie sounds professionally disapproving. Kate has heard that voice before and thinks it might have been in the hospital room.

'The ring tone. I chose it—'

'Oh, my _God! _ You have a ring tone for Castle now? Baby? Wait till I tell my boy.' Lanie snatches up the phone before Beckett can say anything else. If Kate had access to her work weapon now, she'd fire, regardless of visual difficulty.

'Dr Parish speaking.'

Kate strains to decipher what Castle is saying, but all she can detect is Lanie clucking her tongue a hell of a lot and the notion that Castle must be joking around.

'You wanna _what_?' says Lanie, making Beckett want to rip the phone away from her friend, if only she could estimate distance a little better. 'No you can't! That's way too late! And remember her blood pressure and eye healing, for the love of the land!'

'What's he saying? _Lanie! _What's he saying?'

Kate doesn't care if she sounds like a teenager who has lost control of her Facebook group chat to an interfering parent. She wants to know. She ignores the voice telling her to get Lanie to ask him if she really did touch his ass, if he likes her, if he wants to go on a date with her—

'No. You can't do that, Castle. The visit? Okay, but the debrief — it's way too early for that.'

'What debrief? _What _debrief? Is it about work? Has there been a murder?'

Lanie evidently decides that the context of this discussion is too fraught with possible blood pressure elevators. She walks out of the room with Kate's phone, so Beckett doffs the bedding, gets up too quickly to follow Lanie, and is hit by a massive wave of dizziness.

'_God damnit!'_ Lanie, get back here with my phone!' she cries, listening to her friend continuing the conversation in her own kitchen. Kate hears a couple of Lanie laughs. Then a murmur or two. Then a softly pitched 'goodbye', as if the M.E. is talking to _her_ lover and they're planning a secret rendezvous. _Bitches! _ And that includes Castle.

Kate wants to swear. Then shoot. She'll kill Lanie dead and curse over her body, but not really.

_It's the lack of drug talking, right?_

By the time Lanie retraces her steps and deposits Kate's phone on the bedside table, Beckett is lying back on her pillow, making every effort to appear the perfect patient. She's not smiling, however. Neither is Lanie.

'He's visiting this afternoon, but there's no work talk and there's no making goo-goo eyes at each other. I asked him if there's anything else the two of you actually _do._ He assured me you'd find something.'

Kate tries to roll one eye. It hurts so she slumps, sighs and nods in assent.

'Gonna be hard for you, sweetie. Can't really _make_ them goo-goo eyes today.' Lanie coughs back a laugh. 'Maybe a goo-eye?'

Kate tries to make a smartass comment. It hurts her brain. She sighs and nods her head at the M.E. style of humour.

'But don't think I won't be watching, k? I have me two good eyes, I need you well enough to have fun at Kevin's wedding and if Castle gets anywhere near your blood pressure bits, Imma gonna smack him.'

Kate tries to say 'he'll love that,' but it hurts her eye. She sighs. At least she can do that without raising her BP.

* * *

><p>Castle's visit has all the fixings of a supervised adolescent date. Lanie asks Kate to stay on the couch for the duration, but when her patient says 'I'm going to damn well stay in bed, Lanie!' in her most exasperated voice, Dr Parish follows Castle into the bedroom and sits on the opposite side to their guest.<p>

When Castle reaches for Beckett's hand in greeting and makes to kiss her on the cheek, Lanie_ ahems_ like an older lady cautioning a couple of randy lovebirds on a train. When Castle flips at her hair, moving in to see that her clear eye is entirely undamaged, Lanie says 'close enough, Casanova.' And when Castle mentions that Esposito called him today 'with a request for him to help on a case—'

'Okay, guys? That's enough.'

Lanie stands and looks down on the scene. It's all Kate can do to stop herself screaming, _'Lanie! _Get the fuck out of my home!' but her friend's intentions are good, even though her method is utter madness.

'No work talk. I told ya this, Castle, and do I need to remind you both that even though her good eye is uncovered, there's still underlying damage to the other? She doesn't even see the doctor till next Monday. _No. Work. Talk!'_

Castle holds up his hands in his typical sign of surrender. 'I'm sorry. Sorry, okay? Just slipped out, but honestly? With an audience? There's too much pressure?'

Lanie interprets this with an arch of her eyebrow. She looks down towards the area of Castle's groin still covered with a coat, and grins. 'Pressure? I bet there is. But Castle? Don't tell me that you can't perform in front of company. I doubt that's affected your previous—'

'Hey Lanie, it's okay. We're adults, you know?' Beckett looks at Castle and smiles. 'At least _I_ am, and I understand the health complications of … how did you put it? Over excitement?'

Kate struggles to sit up, reaches out to grab Castle's hand and he pulls her into an semi-upright position. It's slow enough to prevent the head spins. He's sensible enough to pummel her pillows. Non sexually, of course. Beckett finds that kinda disappointing and groans internally.

Lanie growls softly. 'I'll leave, but you've gotta promise me not to talk about work. Not yet. Can you even _do_ that?'

'I can,' says Castle, smiling into Kate's eyes … oh, it's just her _eye_, he'd forgotten. 'But I don't know if Detective Beckett will oblige.'

Kate feels better than she's done in days. She's missed him like a hole in the gut — the annoyance of him, the ridiculous boy-manliness of him, the addictive sugar-hit contagious zip of him — and his presence does a lot to fill the hole in her heart. Funny how she's only seeing this now, with the use of one eye. _God, the level of attraction here is giving her double vision._

'I'll be fine, Lanie. I'll talk about … about … um … you been writing much, Castle?'

'Nope.'

Beckett punches his arm and he recoils in mock pain. Lanie scoffs, rolls her eyes and dips her head. 'I'll be in the kitchen, you know? If I hear work talk, I'll be in here faster than Esposito can get off on … on … on …'

'And that'd be over-sharing, right there,' says Castle, not letting his eyes deviate from the patient and causing Kate to feel heated beneath her sheets. _She wonders what it would feel like to be between the same,crisp bedding, naked and eyes closed, running ardent fingers along his spine, letting him use his mouth on her neck, her breasts and so much lower— _

'So? Beckett? Good to see you. You got your eye on me?'

Caught in the middle of her fantasy, a full-body blush seeps into Kate's skin, weaving heated fingers of exploration into her cleavage, over her nipples, claiming abdomen, thigh tops, and the wicked downward spindle of her calves. All he's really done is taper his own fingers from the palm of her hand to that spot on her wrist. He mimics the action from The Old Haunt. Finds innocent-looking parts of her body, watches her reaction to his touch, and uses her zones against her. _He's gonna be monumental in bed, with all the time in the world at his disposal. And he'll be a quick, quick study so that he owns her ..._

'I-I—, yeah. Um, what about … oh ... _work?_ About work?'

Although her good eye is almost closed against the sensation of his fingers, her lips nearly parted in anticipation of more, Kate attempts to wrangle the information from him. It's a lost cause. Her heart rate is already hot, her blood pressure is wet and willing and her mind is on its way to telling her body to pant. Seems her physical responses are as confused as her memories of the hospital bed.

'Can't discuss work, you know that.'

'Was there a body? Is it …' she moves against some stiffness in her thigh. It just brings her closer to Castle's sitting position. 'Is it complicated?'

'No. All under control. And Kate? You need to rest. What about I just sit here and you relax?'

Does he _know_ what the pornographic wrist assault is doing? Yeah, he does! He'll know everything about her body one day, and he'll use it. The thought nearly has her at ecstasy DEFCOM.

'Don't wanna rest,' she admits, though she doesn't know exactly _what_ she wants to do within Lanie limits, anyway.

'Last time you spoke like that, Kate, you showed me your tattoo.'

Beckett feels him penetrate her blood pressure, and the fullness, the pounding, is immense as she's stretched thin. What's _that_ about?

'I did that, didn't I?'

She sighs. It feels _so_ good to finally let him in, and she's open and honest and _sure_ she's confusing sex and blood pressure. But hey? She's plumped on a pillow with a patch on her eye and a bug in her bed. Kate's not about to let her logical mind return and defeat the craziness of The Old Haunt, with her red underwear, his untucked shirt, the feel of his hot lower abdominal skin against her fingertips.

'Yes. You did.' His voice is like liquid film over the rawest skin. She suddenly wants to lick the honeyed balm. 'But you also collected. Do you remember?'

She can. As she closes her good eye, she wishes she had the confidence to ask him whether he wants to have a quick make-out session. Nothing too dire, no strings attached — for now — but just _something_ to relieve the mounting pressure she has around her lips. Around the entire romp of her body.

And then there's work, but Kate can already tell that Castle is going to abide by Lanie's 'no shop' decree.

'Castle? I remember most … um, yeah …' She breathes, bites her lip and tries again. 'You know that I was out of it, right? Doped up on things, and I—'

'I know that you were adorable.' He pauses, looking into her eyes — _eye_ — like he wouldn't care if she asked him to make out, get in, or wash her hair. Oh, and the last idea smashes the final part of her willpower when it comes to Castle control. He'd be magnificent at _that_ too, in the midst of a steamy, pulsating shower, slick tiles and gushing water ...

'You're still adorable.'

_He can have her now. He can take her anytime he wants. Blood pressure be damned!_

'Kate? _Kate? _You okay?'

The colour drains from her face and is flushed to places where it's less obvious and more enriching of lushness. Kate knows she must be wearing her desire like a one-eyed pirate wears a black patch — obviously. Raunchily. For once, she just does not care.

_Do you wanna come closer and just shape-shift our lips together for a while?_

'Guys?' comes Lanie's voice from the corner of Kate's door. 'I bought you some coffee, coz apart from talking work and making them goo-eyes? It's something you both do real well.'

She throws Castle a look of warning. 'Glad to see you're keeping your distance. If you feel the need to touch something hot, then put your whole hand in this coffee instead of some bedding. K?'

Lanie puts Kate's beverage on her bedside table, grins at them and stomps out of the room.

* * *

><p>Castle doesn't know what to do with his hands. He knows what he wants to do with them, but considering the proximity of Lanie, his move would be neither appropriate nor allowed. He stops stroking Beckett's arm as soon as the coffee arrives.<p>

He doesn't want to stop touching her at all, but he feels a little guilty that he's found an area of her body he can access publicly, which causes such a private simmer. It's heady knowledge. He needs to be at a stage where he can use his tongue to investigate further, but he's concerned about the Tongue Lashing de Lanie at the moment, and will wait for the comfort of a queen-sized bed following their colleague's wedding reception.

_Soon._

His resolve is strong, his intention true, his patience like a herd of oxen moving the earth … until she finishes her coffee and licks her bottom lip, sidles slightly in the bed and arches the only eyebrow that's noticeable in his direction.

'About the hospital, Castle? There's some unfinished business, you know?'

_Does he? Um, hell, yeh-has!_

Castle feels himself nodding his head, his lips open so that they flubber together like corresponding lines of delicious jelly.

'And then there's the Ferrari. I'm gonna drive that to the wedding, right?'

_You can drive it anywhere. Even over a cliff, as long as you're naked and straddling my lap when we sail downwards_.

'Sure. As long as your eye is better.'

Beckett moves forward. So incredibly slowly, it's like the death-stalk of a predatory cat before it pounces on a cute, delectable, stiff piece of meat. 'It'll be better. Now about the things I _said_, the things I _did_?'

Castle doesn't move. He's worried that any sudden effort of his part might upset the Beckett cart and topple her back into her pillows and padded eyes. He holds his breath, decides to part his lips just in case, then watches her one-sided gaze drift to his mouth.

_Not now, Kate. Remember your blood pressure, and my resolve?_

'I said and did things I wouldn't normally do. Okay?' There's nothing between them now except no room for the twenty-five inch erection he'd be having if Lanie hadn't chosen that moment to make a noise in the kitchen. It causes Kate to whisper, 'doesn't mean I don't want to do them again.'

And there it is. She does some of the things she obviously wants to do again.

As she sinks her lips into his, Castle can't keep his eyes open for love or money. It's as though it's too much. By looking at her, he'll be unable to focus on the delights of both the visual and visceral simultaneously, so he shutters the lids and lets their mouths make merry.

It's one of the most erotic things he's ever done, and for a metrosexual, man-about-town, charming, wealthy, twice-married, eligible bachelor of his age, that's a huge statement. It's something about her bedroom, her ardent sweet-scape of a mouth, lips that seem fervent and receptive and ready to do more, the fact that Kate Beckett is initiating everything his heart desires …

He pulls back. Strange, but Castle isn't a 'puller backer' of any kind, unless a pirana has him in her grasp and wants more than he's willing to give. But never with Beckett. He can't imagine a time he'd stop pressing anything against Kate Beckett.

'Your blood pressure? I don—'

Her smile is enough to stop him speaking. The gentle pull on the back of his head is enough to have him drifting forwards — downwards — so she has plumped pillows at her back and he has an uncomfortable pillow between his legs. She's in for a long-haul kissing session. Castle knows enough about this to recognize all the cues: semi-reclined posture, her arm round his waist, encouraging his lower body closer, a gentle cacophony of sighs and baby grunts, the fact that she's using a variety of techniques to render him incapable of stopping. _She is sex and friend and family and fate, with everything in between, and he is hers. From the first._

'Kate? C'mon. Your blood pressure.'

She doesn't let him inhale again, but murmurs into his lips, her tongue jockeying for position around his bottom teeth. 'Better. Kissing. Makes … it ..' She sighs. 'So much better.'

Castle groans. He wants her well and safe, but this? This is an impossible situation. The sun is starting to set, creating the most intimate lighting in her room, her pyjama top is threatening to open without his assistance and all he can focus on is how much he wants this. How long he's wanted this. _Her._

'And … Lanie?'

He can barely speak. If he had to make a noise, Castle thinks he would choose to weep. It's so emotive. She's so intoxicating, like the whirl of pure whiskey against his throat; and then she stops.

Dragging her lips away from his, she rubs her cheek against his jaw, en route to the whiskery bits beside his ear, then straight into the whispery bits inside that vesicle. _Ohhh. His blood pressure must surely be higher than hers?_

'We just have to be really, _really_ quiet, Castle. Can you even do that?'

He's silent. Castle lets her hot breath jingle his ear bud. He dies in the sensation of feeling a smile near the side of his face and the hint of tongue clipping the upper orifice of his ear. Her words? Whispered sex on a sigh. He can try to be quiet, but can she?

'I guess,' he says, hamstrung round his larynx, 'we will have to use our mouths for something. Quiet?'

'Yeah.' A smile. 'Sounds good.'

She's back in his space, and Castle has to stop the primal urge to bundle her body under him and fuck them both into oblivion. That would make too much noise, let alone cause blood pressure problems, and he's trying to stay aware of both factors while her mouth seduces him further and further into the Beckett abyss.

He kisses her with every ounce of his experience, mixing it up, swapping rough tongue play for gentle nips and urgent, flagrant exchanges of grunt. And then he does — GRUNT, that is — and it's louder than he intended, and in response to her bunting her teeth into his lower lip.

It's so arousing, he forsakes his mental troth to silence, and then booted, ominous footsteps penetrate the haze of sensuality.

'You're _not_ helping,' Lanie says, as she makes like a storm trooper into Kate's room, turning on the main light to help her assess the situation. Somewhere in Castle's brain, he knows that Lanie has allowed this to go on longer than she should have, but his noise of pure pleasure has been that one sexual step too far.

Castle jerks backward and stands. It's like he and Kate have been caught necking on a first date during the 1950s and Castle is about to face a parental 'you touch my daughter's breasts, you marry her' ultimatum from Dr Parish.

He's ready to do both.

Despite the joking words and banter flying between the three of them, Lanie wanders around the room as though she's guarding Kate's chastity, and Beckett can't help a lascivious smile.

In the midst of all the play, Castle leaves. He hasn't been asked to, but he does it anyway. Once he kisses her cheek, the back of her hand, and tries to ignore the imploring, one-eyed look from Kate to 'just stay', he's out of there before threats of blood pressure or Lanie ire have no more meaning.

One more session like _that_ and all bets are off. Ferraris, pool tables, weddings, wagers? Nothing is going to hold him back. When she's given a full bill of health, is able to see things more clearly than she can tonight, and kisses him like that again, Castle is going to buy them some privacy. Everything comes — and comes, and then comes again — to those who wait. He's a champion at Beckett biding (and Beckett bedding, he's sure.) Delaying the gratification for another week will be good for the soul.

But not for his pole.

_Ah, he's a dirty poet, and don't he know it,_ he thinks, as he smiles and stir-fries in his own kitchen. Castle puts down the wok and reaches over to accept the third in an exchange of flirty texts from Kate.

_Next time u need to b quiet. Can't wait._

He burns his hand as he recovers from her words, realizing that the Beckett hotness reaches all the way across town and into his pants by cell phone connection alone. There's not even an app for that.

Grinning, he lets Martha serve the meal and touches-up his iPhone. Let the sexual textuals begin.


	7. Chapter 7

_Bit of a time jump at the start of this chappie too. Thanks for the read and the words, everyone, they're very much appreciated. This isn't my first fanfic, nope, but it's the first time posting here. It's been a lovely experience once I learned formatting ; )_**  
><strong>

**NOW**

It's ritualistic, the lighting of candles.

She used to do it in the bathroom of her old place, before the bubbles in her tub were drowned in a shower of bomb and fire. It used to be extreme. Twenty candles, maybe more, as though the time taken to light them extended the anticipation for that first ankle-full of warm water to hit her body.

True bathtub foreplay.

Kate loved the lead up — getting home after a day of bullshit and battle, pouring a glass of wine, grabbing a book and some bubbles. Pure relaxation. It seemed fitting that the moment her old place blew, the tub was the only dependable spot in which she could seek refuge.

The candles? She'd line 'em up along the sill. She'd use the ignition flame in opposition to the weapon she'd been packing all day, and instead of firing something cold and hard against the suppleness of her palm, she'd evoke light. It was soothing. Significant.

Her new place has a gorgeous bathroom with a tub under her shower. It's a smaller area, so Kate has arranged only a handful of candles along the line of her sink as it dips beneath the main window. She loves the intimacy. She's propped a make-up mirror in the corner of the room where she always lights the final candle. It's the only part of the ritual she's retained, and it harks back to something she used to do when she was a teenager.

Light a candle to remind her of lost lives, watch the ghost of her own image haunt the mirror, then plunge into the crispness of bubbles. Now it washes away the grunge of death and another day detecting the scum of NYC streets.

Tonight the candles flicker to a different beat. The light dances across her cheekbones, alerting her downcast eye to a more crowded reflection in the mirror. As she reaches to fire the last in the smaller line of tapers, he moves behind her and watches them in the glass.

'You are so breathtakingly beautiful.'

He hasn't touched her yet, hasn't acted on the impulse that smacked them both in the face when he walked into her apartment about ten minutes ago. Hasn't questioned or made smart comments about why she's wearing a robe or why she just smiled at him and walked away into her bathroom. He'd followed. Not like a puppy dog trotting after a bitch on heat, but like a sophisticated man wearing bedroom eyes and an openness she just has to share.

He hasn't even brushed his fingertips against the tie on her robe.

When all is said and done, this is perhaps the most erotic thing Kate has ever encountered. It's more sexy than his demeanor in The Old Haunt, more ruggedly handsome than the charming rogue standing with a pool cue and his shirt hanging out, more dynamic than any of their previous word play. And she wants him with an intensity bordering on the insane.

It seems so long ago. The red lingerie, the bet, the gauntlet, the pool challenge. Yet as Kate looks into the mirror and waits, she realizes she's wearing more than she did at The Old Haunt. Her single eye patch is a token reminder, but not the only one.

Castle's top is unbuttoned. She can see the rising sprigs of his chest hair at the very bottom of the reflection, his height while she's barefoot allowing more of his body to peep over her shoulder. She knows his shirt is untucked, had heard the quiet rustle of his clothing as he walked behind her into the bathroom, but it's his serious silence that's unnerving. Only the feeling of radiated warmth from his body and his appearance at her side tells her he's really in her bathroom, waiting for what's next.

_He knows what's next. So does she. They're hardly bimbette debutantes standing against the barrier at the Dance for Wallflowers hoping to get lucky._ Though they're both still rooted to the spot. Why are they always so goddamn inert at these moments?

'Kate?'

Beckett has heard her name spoken in fevered, whispered inquiry too many times of late. She'll never grow tired of Castle using either of her names, but she's weary of his uncertainty. She's sick of _Kate?_, with a question mark, followed by a problematic pause. He can call her by the formal 'Detective' title on any given occasion. It's been such a turn-on since day one, she doesn't quite know where to start with that, but tonight? There's no more _Kate?_

She's also sick of her own hesitancy.

The candles flicker in unison as she moves slowly around and past him in a delicate dance of decision. There's not a lot of room to tango, not much air available to over-speak or analyze, and the tension is creating a thickness to the environment that might clog up Beckett's resolve if she doesn't act now. This is the woman who donned her red skin to play pool with the pro in his Old Haunt. Surely she can strip all layers when she's bold and Beckett in her bathroom.

_What's the worst thing that could happen?_

He could walk away. She shrugs mentally; it's worth the risk.

'Wanna see water boil, Castle?' she mouths, as she drops her robe, turns her back and jumps in.

* * *

><p><strong>Then:<strong>

The sext messages fly over NYC like the flashiest lightening splitting the horniest sky.

Castle finds it hard — in so many, many ways — to hide his initial delight, but as the hours wear on and Beckett ratchets up her responses, it becomes difficult to stop checking his phone every other minute. And impossible to text with sensuality and stealth when Martha and Alexis are around.

He silences the message alert tone to vibration. Every time his pocket jingles, lower, lower, so close to his groin, he thinks of Beckett. Every time his pouch buzzes — inward and inward — he imagines Kate on the end of his line. Every time he reads her words, he scrunches up his face in disbelief and asks his brain to process whether the messages are really _from_ her or if he's suffering Beckett withdrawal.

'You guys sending me texts?' he asks Esposito and Ryan.

It's two days after he's left Kate, in a frenzied flap of laughter and intense arousal. Castle is still celebrating the fact that she didn't want him to leave. He is high on the handful of messages they've already sent to each other, and is just waiting for an invitation back into the bosom of her apartment. He's nearly passing out from the anticipation, and not in a good way.

'Why, bro?' asks Esposito, looking up from his computer screen with a smile. 'You want us to message you, all sexy like? You lonely with Beckett away?'

He is. Castle doesn't even bother sitting in his usual spot, preferring not to look into the vacant chair. He recalls the days of stealing her seat, just so he could tease her piggy-tails that little harder, stir the pot a little more. Once she's well and back at work, he'll remember to cause the chaos that she so desperately hates, if only to be the one in her life who has the means to splash her pot.

So it boils.

Thinking about pots and stirring causes him to wonder about his phone. Castle checks it again, forgetting that he has the full attention of Esposito and the groom-in-waiting from across the room.

Oh, there's a 'Becks-tex' — his latest, titillating term to describe Kate and the art of sexting.

This morning's exchange is still in his phone's memory, and when he doesn't hear from her for a half-hour here and there throughout the day, Castle rereads it to ensure he's not hallucinating:

_"R u up?"_

_"*checks* Yes. But only 4 U"_

_"Classy. I'm hungry. Wot U eating?"_

_"U?"_

_"Not yet. Cook me pancakes & u could get lucky"_

_"Really?"_

_"No."_

_"Oh!"_

_"Ur so easy."_

_"U have no idea."_

Without paying too much attention to the text ID in his phone, Castle clicks into the message and immediately reads:

_"Hey Castle. I luv u. I want u and need to feel u up. Have 4 so long. Come. Oh, and come ovr to my place 2. 2night. Love, Kate — ur hot detective. *hearts* *hearts*"_

The instant he looks at these words, Castle struggles to see. It's like he has been poked in both eyes by two stiff sticks from The Old Haunt, what with the blood pounding in his head, his vision blurring, his throat dry. He's in shock. It's like an anaphylactic eating his weight in peanuts, he feels bloated, breathless and dizzy.

'Oh?'

Castle doesn't mean to say this aloud. All he wants to do is escape to a lonely interrogation room, reread what he _thinks_ he has seen, and respond as best he can. That, and catch the fastest cab in NYC over to Kate's cocoon, all the while plotting the many ways he'll make serious love to her.

He errs in his confusion and looks up from his phone, immediately noticing Esposito almost keel over with laughter, and Ryan choking at the text he's put into 'Jenny's work phone' keypad and sent to Rick. Castle _knew_ the _'I luv u'_ wasn't from Beckett. It had only been wishful thinking on his part that had befuddled his brain.

'Right. Right. Very funny. Very, very funny,' he says, sipping the final dregs of his lonely coffee. Hot beverages without the hottie are nearly as chilly as wearing his shirt untucked in the middle of winter, but if Kate ever wants him to do that again, he'll brave the cold and flap about like a cock with over-sized wings.

_Oh yeah,_ he hears his diabolical, pool playing voice suggest. _Over sized cock is the image of win!_

Regaining what's left of his concentration, Castle listens to the continuing banter of his colleagues. Esposito and Ryan are brotherly in their comment, and if Castle wasn't focusing his thoughts on Beckett and cock and how to get into her pants … um, _apartment_ again, he'd be happy to mix it up with the fraternity.

'Aw, Castle. Text message got you all hotted up with the _I wuv yous?_'

'Dude? Think you're gonna get more than a poke in the eye this time?

'The texting got you all jumpy over there, hey Castle? Interested in giving Beckett some texual healing?'

They rib him for as long as it takes Montgomery to remind them to follow-up the lead from earlier in the day, and for Castle to remember he's in the precinct to give insight, not to wait for an invite.

Doesn't stop him checking his phone every time the guys look away from where he's standing. The moment the vibration becomes a great big Beckett bulge in his pants pocket, Castle wants to flaunt the message in their faces. He doesn't. He can barely move due to the repressed excitement.

_"Can u visit 2night? Wear soft shoes and b quiet. Round 9?"_

There are a million things Castle wants to text back. Stuff about Lanie and blood pressure and whether to pack a toothbrush and condoms. About staying over and appropriate sexual positions for eye injuries and the impending wedding night, now just a week away.

He stifles the urge to get complicated. He's a guy — hey, he's Rick Castle — and if a beautiful woman invites him over with soft shoes and a round 9 (he's sure _that_ can be interpreted in a dirty way too) then he's there. Without question.

_"C u then. U'll be up?"_

_"No. But you might b"_

Unable to form words — either sextual or actual — Castle doesn't even pretend to hear what Ryan and Esposito are talking about for the rest of the afternoon.

* * *

><p>He rushes home.<p>

He hurries through dinner preparation for the three of them, only barely registering that Alexis is trying to talk about what to buy Ashley for his birthday. He couldn't give a rat's tail about Ashley at the moment. He cares about Alexis, of course, but when his mind is on being 'up with' Beckett in a few hours, Ashley's birthday is as important as a saddle on a killer rhinoceros.

Noone's gonna ride that! But yeah, they're horny!

_Ohhh! Riding? Now, he can think of THAT with a smile on his face and a spring in his pants … um, step._

Castle flurries through eating and flashes by clean up.

'How's Kate faring,' asks Martha, happy to pour a second glass of red wine to help her get through the stacking of the dishwasher and the wiping of kitchen surfaces.

'She's … she's …'

How _is_ she, exactly, he thinks as he notices Alexis prick up her ears at talk of Beckett. Perhaps he needs to be delicate here? He doesn't need to say 'she's so sexy, I want to rip off her eye-patch and do pirate-things to her har-de-har-har parts.' Castle doesn't need to suggest 'I'm going over to her place, round 9, to DO HER. Just like I should have done in The Old Haunt, just like we've been wanting to do for three years.'

He needs to filter. He needs his Father Filter.

'She's faring okay, Mother. She's getting better, with the help of Dr Parish, and I'm going to visit tonight. I haven't seen her for several days—'

'But your text has been running hot, Dad,' says Alexis, exchanging what Castle thinks is an all-too-knowing look with Martha. _Damn, do they know? Does everyone know that he and Beckett have been having post eye-poking sext? Without a com-dom?_

He smiles at his inner witticism and Martha interprets it as something else.

'Yes, Richard. It has. Been running hot. And you seem to be running hot tonight, too.'

'You been missing Detective Beckett, Dad?'

'He's certainly in a mad hurry to do _something_, darling,' says Martha, with a quiet laugh. 'Anyone would think that your father is going on his first date. I haven't seen him quite this intense since he was fifteen and meeting up with—'

'And that's where we stop reminiscing,' says Castle, with a flourish of his hand and a shoulder hug for his daughter. 'Yes, Alexis. I've been missing my work with Detective Beckett. We share a great deal of responsibility for the safety of the streets, you know.'

He waggles his eyebrow to distract Martha and Alexis from the fact that he's almost turning into a befuddled, excited, anxious puddle of Alexander right in front of them. His kitchen clock shows 8 pm. Why does he feel like he's been the glorious, golden coach on the way to the ball, but suddenly his sides are splitting from the strain of the emerging pumpkin.

It's like his clothes have become so confining, his insides are turning to vegetable. Orange, bulging pulp, needing to emerge.

God. He needs to be naked. The message is clear. He needs to slip Cinderella his calling card and let her steer his (under) carriage with the edge of her glass, Beckett-heeled slipper.

Castle blisters and blusters through the rest of the conversation, not caring if he doesn't make sense, playing along with the gentle teasing and questions of his favourite family females.

Because they are. His favourites, but they gather under his subheading of 'family', and that doesn't include Beckett. _Yet._ His 'other' favourite female awaits, his coachman is jockeying for position, straining to keep the magic alive — and in his pants — until midnight.

After that, the pumpkin is outta the coach. Or something as nonsensical.

* * *

><p>She grins in reply to his hesitant knock on her door.<p>

It's so quiet, Lanie wouldn't even notice it if she was still _in_ the apartment. The fact he's _here_, right on the dot of nine and being so damn stealth is so hot that Kate's smile vanishes quickly. It's time. She's never been so ready to get wet.

She steps forward, then retreats.

Beckett could weigh it all up even now, create the negative self-talk that would have her running away again. She could call out 'just a minute', walk to her bedroom, flip off her bathrobe and climb into jeans and something modest. She could shut the bathroom door. Pretend the tub is full from a previous submerging. She could even be really cliche. She could tell herself that it would be better to wait for the wedding night before she initiates proceedings that are sure to domino effect all the way to bed and back. All the way to work and back. All the way to her fucking heart, and back.

But it's not their wedding night next week, for chrissake.

There's no reversing this. Maybe she's never been so sure that she wants to go forward?

If she keeps standing in the middle of the kitchen, dressed in the most decadent robe in the entire city, she's going to be made inert by the softest, reddest material she's ever owned. She bought this robe on a whim, a knee-jerk reaction to her last one being burnt to a crisp. If Kate's honest with herself, she bought the robe with a view to taking it off slowly, letting it fall in a heap on the ground, allowing her body to be flushed with excitement and anticipation of …

_Him_. Watching _her. _ It was never for Josh, and there's no guilt or regret attached to that particular admission.

The knock is quiet again, but more insistent. If Kate wants the face truth, she bought the robe while in fantasy land, imagining a time where she might flounce around in front of Castle, light some candles, whisper some words, have him graze the sluice of her neck muscles with his teeth.

_Doing it. Doing HIM as he does her._

She opens the door as she will her robe, all grace and determined fluidity, and immediately the colour pays off. His face reflects the richness, his smile reaches his eyes and he hands her a bottle of wine in the same shade.

'Hey,' he whispers, the corner of his mouth quirking upward in the effort to keep his voice down. 'I bought over a screw top bottle so there'd be no uncorking noise. You look … um … you look … red ... um, _rested_.'

Kate takes the wine, uncertain whether she should come clean about them being entirely alone, then decides it's way to sexy to have him speak with his eyes. He is. He's practically burning down this apartment with the sparks that are flying from his visual appraisal. He looks at the robe like it's a monarch's wedding gown. He wants to rip it off to get to the crown jewels.

'I feel better.'

'I bet you do.'

Kate arches an eyebrow in time with the double entendre and she's disappointed to see him backtrack just a little. It's all too easy to banter when they're at the Precinct or in the company of others or via text. It's so intense in this situation, he lets his eyes drop, makes a drinking gesture with his hand and heads into the kitchen to get some glasses.

He tiptoes. Beckett doesn't know whether to laugh or squish him to death. The latter would lead to sex on the floor or her kitchen counter. Maybe that's in order?

The idea causes a cavalcade of emotions and feelings to drip inside her robe. Blatant desire. Red-wire arousal. Flat-line anxiety. Damn, she _is_ a debutante bimbette at the Wallflower Ball. Why is this all so complicated when it should be a wonderful outpouring of estrogen bombs, endorphin kicks and testosterone torpedoes?

'So? Kate? I've liked your messages over the last couple of days,' he tries to joke, handing her the wine glass, sipping at his own, but looking at her like he wants to take a mouthful of flesh. 'Um, and … I like your … your robe.'

'Uh-huh.'

_What's a horny woman to say to the guy she's wanted to bandy about on a bed for three years? Even longer, if she counts the fangirl crush she had on his writing before he came to work with her. Fuck! What's it going to take? A pool cue up the ass?_

Nope. It's not a good image. Beckett tries to focus on seducing him with her eyes. She takes in his black, loose-fitting shirt, the fact it lounges beneath his belt into his jeans. Then there's his 5 o'clock shadow, finding a way to make love to his jaw and upper lip in the most timely matter. She wants some of that, too. Against her face. Along her neck.

'Do you want to sit down, Kate?' He's still whispering. It's so endearing, she forgets her rage at his inability to make the first move. 'Do you want to go somewhere else? Where we won't wake Lanie—'

_That's it!_

Without touching, she uses visual cues to stalk his gaze, and pounces. She smiles, tilts her head, swivels on bare feet and floorboards, and pads towards the bubbles she needs to pop. _Or is it her Castle cherry she needs to pop? Oh, yes. That's the one!_ Whether he joins her or not is another question, but her eye is paining and she's sure it's from the referred headache that _is_ Richard Castle.

Bending over the tub to test the temperature, she tops it up with some water and a delicate blob of bubble goo. He's beside her in an instant, but it's only when he turns up in her mirror and tells her that she's beautiful that Kate allows herself the luxury of full immersion.

* * *

><p><strong>NOW AGAIN:<strong>

'Kate?'

It's awkward. He hasn't felt this awkward since he tried to jerk-off to what he thought was a porn video, only to find that neighbours had recorded some special moments in their pet's lives on home film over the episode of 'Naked Nikita Does New York'. He'd been fifteen. He hadn't been into beastiality.

Castle feels like he's fourteen and pimply as he stands in her kitchen. Like he's pubescent and all distended cock, as she wears her red robe like she'd worn that _thing_ in The Old Haunt. Like he's fifteen year-old Randy Andy, desperate to get laid when she visually responds to his come-on joke with a look that sends him straight to the shaft of his penis.

Metaphorically.

NO! _That's bullshit! There is no metaphor._ He's actually there, round the shaft of his dick. The metaphor idea is just to make him feel better. _Normal._

It's all awkward. Hadn't they kissed intimately just days before? Hadn't she touched his butt and told him she's wanted to 'do him' for years? Yeah, but he's nervous, goddamn it, he is.

But as soon as she bares her body in a movement of unravelling that leaves him stunned, Castle is back on the front foot and doesn't have to try and read her mind anymore. Whether she's hot, cold, hypertensive, moody, loud, horny, funny, high, angry, frigid, grieving over her most recent (wrong) boyfriend, in pain, playing him for a sex-charged fool ...

With the release of her robe, it's all so much easier. And _no_, Castle refuses to feel guilty about Kate making that first, pivotal move. He has always wanted her — he _loves_ everything about her — but she has the ability to hurt his heart like no other. His heart. It wouldn't have stood a true Kate Beckett rejection to any real advances, despite the roguish mask he tries to wear.

He watches the water bubble, and is mesmerized. It might as well be boiling, hissing, in reaction to the way she sits and reclines like the Queen of Sheba, except with way different hair._ Oh, her hair!_ It's bunched up and ready for his fingers. And her neck, it's pressing back against the edge of the tub, ready for his fingers. Oh, and her body? Well, it's somewhere down _there_, getting frosted by bubbles and waiting for his fingers.

Castle realizes his mouth is ajar and his mind is a-crazed. He's making her wait when all he wants to do is make her—

'Rick?'

He's behind her before she can sound the _'ck'_ at the end of his name. He's on his knees, gently releasing her hair, running his hands through its softness, pressing his face into the side of her neck and whispering things. Castle thinks they might be garbled, but she laughs when he _thinks_ he says 'Oh, my God. There's no fire in this apartment, but it's so damn hot' and 'this is more fun than a poke in the eye with a stick.'

She turns her head, grabs at his face and pulls him toward her. There's no physical way she can get him into her bath, so she uses the power of her lips to shape them into his mouth, to coax him closer. As soon as she streams her tongue along his lower lip, Castle is pulling at his own shirt, flicking it open and fumbling the cuffs over his hands. Without breaking the kiss, he bundles it up and flings it down on her robe.

'Getting in?' she asks, almost moaning when he turns her shoulders away from him and proceeds to kneel behind her.

'Not yet.'

He can feel himself panting, straining to get to her, so he uses the hardness of the bath to steel the cap of his erection, extending the moment of anticipation where he'll be able to glaze it into her.

It almost kills him.

It's when he starts washing her hair, using a combination of scalp massage techniques he discovered to soothe Alexis's fear of water when she'd been young, that it gets serious again. There's a lot of silence, impregnated with some sighing, some breathy cooing, some purring. She's fluid. She's letting him do all the work and he takes it, until the moment he stops to get some more shampoo.

Her eye snaps open. 'You're still not naked in my tub.'

'Yeah, well I'm busy.'

She shifts distractedly, impatiently beneath his hands, as he finishes washing her hair, following it with some strong massage contractions down the side of her neck and into her shoulder blades. She's so damn fine. Willowy and lithe, but with the added veneer of toughness, the armour she wears that's so hard to penetrate unless you 'keep turning up'.

He's here, and he's up.

He finds an empty plastic bowl and uses it to cup warm, clean water to rinse off, loving the feel of his chest against her wet hair, reveling in the sensuality of slow, rhythmic movement. Castle uses his other hand to shield her eye patch. He watches her tilt back her head, so it nestles below the triangle formed by his nipples and chest hair, and simply stares. She is breathtakingly beautiful. She is sex-on-a-stick, LA-swimsuit hot, wet, relaxing, incredibly sublime … oh, and she's opening her one good eye again, oh, yes … and she's so … so … oh … she's …

_Crying?_

'Hey?" he says, his immediate concern rendering his erection-hard factor (his EHF) drop from twelve outta ten to 10.5. 'Whattsa matter?'

It's difficult to deduce whether the seepage round her eye is an effect of the steamy bath or if she's upset, but as soon as Castle observes her facial expression, the line of her mouth … it doesn't take New York's best detective to figure out that she's emotional.

'Get in.'

She's using Beckett talk, so Castle is out of his pants and into a spin before he has time to assess that his EHF has rocketed to a factor of 110.

'I'm getting in. I'm getting in!'

With less elegance than Kate, Castle is one with the bubbles of her tub before the next teary streak has escaped the corner of her eye. He sits opposite her, his legs scrunched up so that he can lean forward and bring her inwards to his chest. Naturally, she straddles him and they fit like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He wants to say a thousand things, but all thought is cut off as she kisses him with every desperate desire he has housed for three years.

The spark flares to inferno.

'Hey?' he bites out between oral onslaught, as mouths press, collapse and fuse closer than their lower bodies. 'Hey, Kate?' He's loving it, but he wants to tell her so. 'There's no … rush … '

'Really? Wanna wait another three years before we get around to scratching this?'

She hits the words out in a whip of tongue and nips and soft, soft lips. Her look is pure LA pool exit, but her one uncovered eye is not wearing any war paint. She's so vulnerable — patched — that he wants to gentle the kisses before making profound love to her. Not a quickie in the bath. Well not yet. Not until he gets a handle on all the things that make Beckett tick.

But she wants it, and there's something about a fired-up, determined Beckett that he cannot resist even if he wasn't beneath her, naked and instinctive, in the sleek, hot wet of her tub. Castle tries to say something about condoms, about comfort, but she bunts things like 'tests are fine, are yours up to date?' — Oh, god yes, they are — and 'contraception covered'. He tries to tempt her with mumblings of a soft mattress, extended pleasures, ongoing, sensual experiences, but she's so persuasive with her angle of hips, with her licking of his neck, with her placement of … _everything_.

Okay, it's awkward. It's like his very first time, and when he thinks about that later, after he manages to get her into her bed and spend time over her body, that's significant. She's around him before he has the chance to comprehend that she's taking him. Kate reaches between them, finds him ribald and ready against her inner thigh and just owns him.

He submits and loves it. He presses upwards, harder and faster than he initially wanted, but he loves it. She shudders against him, removes her tongue from his ear and groans a kiss into his mouth. And he loves her. It really is that simple.

Castle has no clue how long it lasts — the grind and pump of flesh, the taste of wine and desire, the damp crisp of bubbles against his thigh and back, but when it's over and she comes in the instant before she kills him with her quakes, he doesn't care. He does take notice when she slumps against his shoulder and let's her hair frame her face in the aftermath. Castle brushes it back from her cheek, finds the trail of some tears and kisses a path between her eye and lips.

'Come to bed, Kate.'

She smiles and kisses him, and that's enough for Castle at the moment. Until she says 'Rick' again and then it will be all about the protracted loving.

It's a struggle to move, but as with most things Beckett, the struggle is well worth the effort.


	8. Chapter 8

Very few people have ever washed her hair. Her mom, sure. Maybe her dad when she was little, and the local hairdresser with the clunky jewelry and cold hands before she hit her teens.

Even fewer people have taken the time to be gentle in their ministrations of her over during formative years. '_She's a resilient kid'_, folks would say. '_A bit of dirt on her knees won't hurt her.' _

Once she'd become a cop, offers of physical comfort were few and far between, unless they were bathed in sexual overtures. Even Josh had stopped trying to doctor her when he realized that Kate was more interested in getting back out onto the streets of NYC than resting. Lanie had done okay. She'd provided medical assistance, been a sounding board about recovery, fussed about blood pressure and medication … but her friend hadn't offered to wash her _hair._

No one washes the Beckett hair these days, apart from Gillian at The Fringe_, _every six weeks on a Wednesday night when she heads out of work and straight into the salon seat.

Kate washes her own hair. Gillian snips at her split ends, massages her scalp once in a while and Detective Beckett is extremely happy with this arrangement. It's not intimate. It's essential, and the job of lathering the shampoo by a professional hair-doer is as fundamental as police paperwork for a detective.

And as boring.

The second Castle kneels behind the bathtub, she knows the process of the lather will never be the same again. She'll _never _feel this way about getting wet, coming clean. About being pampered and letting someone else assume a role of command. About feeling vulnerable and exposed, naked in the tub, awash with wounds and worries. About letting him dictate to her.

She wonders when it happened last — this stride towards submission. If that's the right word, she thinks, as her back melds into the bath and she tries to stop herself arching into his hands, surrendering to the sensation of touch, pressure, wanton … wanton … ?

Just_ want.  
><em>

The last thing Kate means to do is cry. The second last thing she wants to do is be so desperate to do him_, _that she makes demands and jumps him as readily as a pogo stick does a pavement.

When she cries _and _takes him in about ten seconds flat, Kate spends a moment wondering what in the hell she is going to do for an encore. Tears escape her good eye when he shields her bad one from the flow of water, when he's so damned gentle she feels as though she might break despite his care and attention.

Once Castle presses his fingers into her neck, the sides of her shoulders and massages away all thoughts of lackluster relationships and nowhere men, she sees red. Sexual nowness raw-red! It's almost like Kate needs to get this first one out of the way — weird that, considering how long she's wanted it, but it's nearly to the point where she's determined to hang on to that miniscule control she craves in each and every relationship of her life.

If she takes him now, heated, quickly and on her terms, she'll still have it. She _will. _It's all about the speed. The dictating of terms.

She can do it. She does it easily. Climbs onto him and over him as though they've been made to fit together by the creator of Rubik's cube — Mr Rubik himself? Colour, confusion, connection. Sheer combustion through frustration … and then finally! That goddamn fulfillment they've been flicking at round corners for the past three years. In a blister of bubbly water and splashy flesh, Kate rides it to the very edge of her control, loses it for a couple of seconds, then recovers while Castle surfs into shore.

It's fantastic. _Him. _Those eyelashes that flutter closed just as his mouth opens under hers and searches for taste. Tongue and thrust. It's great, the feel of him. The sensation, the notion that he's there and it's now_, _but then Kate collects her tears, her demands and sits on the board until it's steady on the sand. She's so close to relinquishing total control that she nearly falls into the water and drowns. Although Kate knows that he won't let that happen, Detective Beckett still wears a holster round her heart.

She wants thepretense of total dominion, thanks.

_It's why she insisted he get into her bath. It's why she's perched over him, around him, willing the upright position to make her forget the kindness of his hair wash, the magic of his presence, the rightness of the man._

There's a subtle difference between making love and quickly consummating a relationship in a flurry of water. She tells herself this as he kisses the tracks of her tears with full lips, all the while stroking the top of her hair, the spot between her neck and the tub. There's a distinct pecking order between a cop-on-top and a writer-down-below, and Kate continues to assert this despite Rick stringing her stray hairs behind her ears and looking so deeply into her eyes that she feels exposed.

There's a real difference between what they've just done and her losing control, just as there's no weakness in expressing pleasure or orgasming in a verbal-snatch of nonsense words and _ohhs._

_She hasn't lost total command yet. She's just enjoyed a quickie in the bath ..._

'Come to bed, Kate.'

Days ago, she'd taken off her clothes in the bathroom of The Old Haunt and flounced into a pool game wearing only the sheerest of petticoats. She'd been daring, crazy even, but so intent on challenging Castle and stringing the game along for the thrill of the ride, she hadn't thought all the consequences through.

Oh, she'd wanted him. _Wants him still, _with a need bordering on insane, but while Kate was in the game_, _it had been mere cat and mouse. Fun and fantasy. She was the one holding the dice, dealing the cards, calling the shots.

'Come on. I got you,' Castle says, helping her lift off him, running his hand up the inside of her arm as he gets to his feet to follow her out of the tub. His palm never leaves the small of her back as they exit the bathroom together, his fingers spread wide enough so they cusp the top of her butt, the span of her waist.

Kate is still the ringmaster of this show. She orchestrated the entire concert at The Old Haunt, she was in charge of the elephant parade into and out of her hospital ward while she was recovering from her eye poke. Why is it that this 'come to bed_' _feels as though it has the ability to transform power into powder?

She can hardly ask him to go home. She doesn't want to do that, but as Kate moves into her bedroom and is waylaid against the architrave of her door by the pool table maestro, she senses her control starting to disintegrate.

She's so full of it.

* * *

><p>It takes Castle about 30 seconds to peel away the remainder of her ridiculously flimsy resolve. Under two minutes to have her on the bed, tucked under him like the most compliant teddy, and only a short time to make her understand that there's a huge difference between submission and wanting it all, in a consensual, wonderful situation.<p>

This feeling — this '_ohgod I'll doanythingtogetthisclose_evencryout_unpolicelike_puffs of_nothing — _is entirely reciprocated. By the time Castle moves his lips along her outstretched inner arm, deposits a series of explicit kisses over the curve of her breast, then returns to capture the mews from her mouth, she's privy to the depths of his emotion.

He's an open book. His eyes are half-mast, there's a catch to his breath that's noticeable between his gasps for oxygen and the sordid assaults on her lips; he even wears a look of astonishment. There is total abandonment of the 'Castle as pool playboy and Old Haunt rogue' mask he'd worn earlier that evening.

He's naked. Entirely undone, and he's about to strip her back to the innards of the Beckett onion — or something less root vegetable-like than that!

'Um, Rick?' she says, wondering what the hell she's going to mutter next, given that they're both reaching for round two, and Castle is fixated on other things besides talking.

'Mmm?'

She'd laugh about rendering him speechless if she could, but it's taking most of her energy to stifle moans, groans. Pants and small, delicate 'fuck me' screams.

Kate sighs. It's a massive sound of resignation about walking the fine line between surrendering control and letting herself loose so that she's in as deeply as her body is telling her she wants to be …

'Castle?'

This time, he doesn't even bother 'mmm-ing', and something in Kate snaps. _Is he getting too damn cocky all of a sudden?_ Just because he's washed her damn hair … is using his goddamn lips to chug her into Despair Land (a place where she doesn't know how to function, just _feel)_ … he's whispering fingers against all the sensitive spots … of her skin … just because he's bringing her … towards another … oh, _jesus … _so soon? Again?

Yeah.

'Castle? We _can't!'_

If Kate could have said anything more stupid, she doesn't know what it would entail. Um, perhaps 'Rick, you're unattractive'? Or 'Castle, I've got something to tell you. I'm a virgin.' Or 'I really wanna a threesome with Perrimutter.'

Instead, Kate chooses the fourth-most ludicrous option. As Castle brings her to that point where he knows she's seconds away from reacting with spasms and a serving of groan, Kate _thinks _she's repeated that they 'can't'. Lo and behold! Castle props above her, missionary slant in mind and poised in position for _'oh God, we so can!'_

'Um, Kate? We've already done it. I'll be ...' his face slips down the side of her neck and he pushes kisses into spots she can't remember _even _owning. 'Really quiet. Lanie'll sleep through everything.'

_God. He still thinks Lanie is here. How much more doable can this man—?  
><em>

'It's not Lanie. She's not here. It's not her. It's … it's … it's … '

_She can't think of the word to describe herself. Um, is it ME? Is it myself, Kate Beckett? What the fuck is it?_

'She's not here? Then I _can _make you scream!'

He snorts against her hair.

'Is it your eye? Is it worrying you?' he asks, his voice so deep, it sounds like it's made of the earth's molten core. _Or is that the thing between her legs? Isn't that the way it's described in romance novels, coz damn? No wonder it is! It's so molten._

'It can be much slower — so much more gentle — than last time, Kate.'

'It's not my … _eye!'_

In fact, in the blink of her one eye, he's used his spot in her bed and her disloyal, mind-of-its-own body to push into her, then retract, seeming to test whether she is all about the stoppage or if she's undecided.

_Because he's like that, damn him! And he's using her body against her ..._

The next thing she knows, she's dictating a rhythm to him, arching beneath him, burying her lips in his shoulder, inhaling the scent of her bath gel in his hair, pulling on both ears so that he kisses her in time with her own need.

'We can still stop,' he screes, like loose falling rocks pounding her ear, as they plummet to the ground. 'We _can. _ I don't wanna—'

'Shut up, Castle!'

The more she tries to hurry things along, to ensure it's quick and easy, no hard feelings if it doesn't go anywhere type-of-thing, the more Castle changes it up. The more Kate strains to _get there, _the more he baulks and uses finesse. The more she groans in frustration, the more he kisses the sound from her lips.

Until he stops, and spins everything around in her bed, so he's in a totally different situation — all fingers on buttons, and lips at her neck, and chest hairs ruffling the top of her spine.

'Oh, _what? _ This is just … just …'

It's a freaking sensation, that's what it is, in that she's freaking and it's kinda sensational, but she doesn't have the words to tell him. She has the moves, the instinctive reactive repertoire. There's nothing new, nothing kinky or unique about the way they are_, _it's just … just … just …

It just is.

And just like that, control is so 2009.

* * *

><p>He wakes her, then lets her sleep for a little while.<p>

She tries not to watch him snooze, but gets caught every time. He uses the bristle of his nocturnal whiskers to draw gasps and muffled exclamations. She finds parts of him that are so sensitive, she stores the spots in her memory for the next time her ear grab is ineffectual. He smiles so much, his face hurts, but when she initiates something around 2 am, he can't remember where his face actually is. She smiles more than she has in a long time, and there's a point during the evening where she laughs so hard, she actually thinks she might have ruptured something round her eye. But then Castle mutters words so suggestive, she forgets the injury and focuses on not curling her toes so much that it causes her bedding to rip.

Kate doesn't sleep. Well, she does, she supposes, but it's intermittent and she's glad about that. She doesn't want to miss anything, which is so cliched and love-song friendly, she'd gag if it was about someone else.

This time it's not. Yeah, it's about her. And him_. _She's in the throes of the love song — something about '_lips of an angel' _or '_coz I'll miss ya baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing' — _and she's too tired to care, or too aroused be sickened by the new version of herself. Det. Kate Beckett: Love Sap.

Just before dawn, she wakes to find Castle staring at the clock. She's been napping on her side, face snuffled into his fine, downy chest hair and when she opens her good eye, she sees him craning his head towards her bedside table. It's early. By her assessment, Rick Castle is up — again — and proving himself to be very hardy and handy, no matter the time. She wonders if this is due to the thrill of their first night together, or whether he's a bundle of elongated nerve endings and a supply of endless testosterone.

Nikki Heat would hope for the latter. Detective Beckett won't admit to wanting that as well.

Kate doesn't speak straight away, happy to prolong the serenity, the intimacy she's feeling this particular morning. She's content to listen to the slow jog of his heart for a moment. Her head moves in time with the expansion of his chest, and she allows herself a second to think about what's actually occurred, about how she's in bed with Richard Castle.

The younger fangirl in her might squee. Might run back to her old apartment, haul out all of his hardcovers belonging to the 'library of Katherine Beckett' and reread some of her favourite prose in the genre. She might dissolve into a puddle of 'oh my God, Richard Castle!' goo, and marvel that the man who breathed life into Derrick Storm is exhaling under her cheekbone, in her bed, butt-naked and bound to her by more than a one-night stand.

It's been three years in the making, this particular book.

If the Castle fangirl wants to squeal and whoop_, _then the real time Beckett tries not to think about those older books being burnt in her apartment. She's a woman who has been engulfed by a relationship before, has been burned … but over-thinking is for schmucks and those who haven't enjoyed the earthy pleasures of being nude and next to a man who is …

Still looking at the goddamn clock._  
><em>

'Gotta _be_ somewhere, Castle?'

She can't help the sardonic tone. Why isn't he watching her sleep? Or touching her inappropriately just so she'll awaken — like he'd done a couple of hours earlier? Is he over her already?_  
><em>

The sound of her voice must shock him. Kate can detect the kicking gallop to his heartbeat, the tension in his muscles as he turns back to her and glides into her space. He's over her in the time it takes the negative voices in her head to giggle ...

'Only need to be here.'

… then disappear.

She remembers a time when she'd told Montgomery that he was like a kid on a sugar high, when she'd thought he had no attention span and more crazy antics than a local circus. Well, Kate had been a little inaccurate. His body is blatantly mature. All man. His attention to detail in bed is akin to a science dork with his first microscope and a splatter of cells on a glass slide. Once he got her horizontal, Kate learned very quickly that he's as methodical and artful about lovemaking as he is haphazard about police procedure and paperwork.

'Was just checking the time to see if it was okay to make breakfast. You hungry, Kate?'

He smells like morning and mayhem, and he's wearing her favourite rumpled look. His hair is too scruffy, his whiskers too scratchy, his eyes so endearingly crinkly. She might tell him she loves that on him. One day.

She kisses everything she can reach, using her tongue to steal the words from his mouth, her hands to show him exactly where her hunger lies.

'I s'pose it's only … five … in the morning … plenty of time. For pancakes ...'

If Kate died and was resurrected numerous times during the night, then nothing prepares her for the heave-ho of emotions that pound her into the next morning. He brings her a tray of flowers and food. It's as magnanimous as the man himself, and just as she's joking about trying to eat through the plate of pancakes, bacon, waffles — 'where did you _get _all this stuff, Castle? — he starts sharing it. Feeding her morsels from his fingertips. Dangling tiny pieces of pancakes in front of her mouth, like a man wrapped in a toga who wants to tease the ladies of Rome with tasty treats.

In a series of actions that makes Kate feel as though she's in a chapter of a light, romantic read, Castle holds the sliver of pancake in the air just above her face, dangling it out of reach so she has to open her mouth and stretch to meet it, only to have him flick it away and replace it with his own lips.

_Urgh, _her Beckett voice groans. _This is so sickening. He's going to get tired of this really soon and you're going to be left with the pieces of a broken, lovesick heart instead of broken, sticky pancake all over your duvet._

Doesn't stop Kate falling for it. Every. Single. Time.

Eventually, breakfast is eaten, the tray is shunted to the side of the bed and they lay on their backs with full stomachs and partially-sated appetites. Kate was going to make her first appearance at work today, despite the fact her eye is still patched, but when she makes noises about getting up and being productive, Castle places his hand on her hip and holds her to the bed.

'There's no work today. I don't have to be home because Alexis is—'

His cellphone _neighs _with a text message. Kate feels so lethargic, she can barely hear what he's saying. She should have gotten up and ready for work prior to the last time they … they… um_… _straight after they ate the very first pancake.

He's right about work. Her eye isn't painful, but she's sensible enough to know that if she returns too early, stays upright for too long, all the recovery that's occurred over the past week might be reversed.

'I think you've done enough for the past while to earn yourself some rest, Beckett,' he says, rolling on to his stomach and rubbing a grin against her full abdomen. 'I'm glad you got the all clear for us to do some … some …'

'Yes?_' _she asks, raising one eyebrow in his direction, and keeping quiet about the fact there was no _all clear. _Not really. Not officially, but she knows her own body. So much other healing has been done here last night.

She ruffles his hair. She could run fingers through that stuff for days on end and still not have enough Castle fur on her skin.

'Glad you got the all clear for some non-eye poking.'

His eyebrows waggle, and Kate shields a guilty grin by propping herself up on two pillows. As usual, he's in her space with the immediacy of one of his erections.

'Kate?'

'Yeah, Castle,' she says, kissing him slowly, working the side of his mouth so that he doesn't keep looking at her with that inquisitive stare of his, trying to read behind her poker face. She must suck at that this morning, because he's inside her mind before her kiss can reach the obscene stage.

'You _did _get the all clear, I take it?' he whispers in her ear, breathing hot nothings against her neck, her hairline.

'Lanie's not here. That's all that matters.'

She's a detective. She knows diversion. It's found in her mouth, her fingers, the slow stroking of his lower back.

_Perhaps not?_

'You sent Lanie home _because _you got the all clear, or because you wanted some privacy?'

Kate reaches for his face, clasps hands both sides of his head and looks him in the eyes, with only one of hers. 'I'm _fine, _Castle. I know how I feel and I didn't overdo it. Trust me.'

'Says the woman who tried to win at pool by slipping into something more underwear?'

Castle sighs, kisses her chastely and Kate bites down on her lip with agitation. She doesn't want to go back to being a patient. Or _being _patient. Surely they're through this? _Or surely he's getting tired of you already? _says her maleficent inner voice.

'I was careful,' she says, wondering if the look on her face is reflecting the worried veneer of his. 'I didn't get too … too … _overwhelmed.'_

Castle laughs. So does she, but it's smaller. Apart from her telling him that 'we can't' late last evening when it was startlingly obvious that they were_, _this is the craziest thing she's said in a while.

'Ok. We probably didn't need to do it … to push it so many, _many _times, Kate. I wish you'd said something.'

She doesn't, and the thin, stubborn line to her lips is mimicked by his own expression.

'I'm fine. _It's _fine!'

She stays where she is, but he moves gently upward, and she's immediately incensed.

'Hey? I'm going to take a shower. Then we can just hang, maybe watch a movie or two? I don't have to be anywhere with Alexis outta town, and Mother is—'

'Just come back to bed, Castle,' says Kate, pushing her head back into her pillow in a move of frustration. When he grins, kisses her again — on the fucking hair — and tucks at her sheet, she reaches out to catch his wrist in her hand.

'I'll join you. It's my shower. I like to save water.'

'Sure.'

But instead of wearing his lecher look that has the capacity to ignite the air between them with unspoken sentences like 'wait until I get you in the shower and razzle you up against the slick tiles with my pinpoint accuracy', Castle dons his 'carer', considerate face.

_Arrrrrrrghhhhhhh._ Again._ Arrrrrrrrrgh!_

She internalizes the scream, adding acid to the ulcer that already has his name on it. Just as she's about to get out of her bed, take steps to make him see that she doesn't need CARE but CARESS, his cellphone pings again with that animal alert tone.

Staying within reach, Castle picks it up and reads his message, the light in his eyes telling Kate that something funny is happening. He reacts as easily as if he's telling her that Alexis is home safely. Or Martha sends her love. Or Esposito and Lanie are kissing in the back seat of a cop car.

'Look at this message, will you? It's got to stop!'

He hands her the phone without a second thought, and Kate reads the message as the pressure of her throbbing pulse compounds into her head. Into her eye socket. Almost ready to spill out, Sigourney Weaver style.

_"Hey Castle. I luv u. I want u and need to feel u up, sweetheart. Have 4 so long. Come. Oh, and come ovr to my place when you feel up. (to it). I *heart* u. Hard. U r so hard, riter boy!"_

She doesn't want to gasp in front of him, doesn't want to break down, but instinctively her hand goes to her injured eye. She recovers in the time it takes him to swing back round and _realize _something is wrong.

Detective Beckett isn't familiar with the texter's number. Not Esposito's. Not Lanie's … Not Ryan ... _deranged fan? Ex wife? Secret lover?_

'Hey _Rick? _she drawls, thumping the phone down on the bed and getting ready to slam a door — doesn't matter what one — in his writer boy face. 'Think you better go home to your own Castle and have a shower by yourself … _sweetheart ..._'

She doesn't say it, but something about his demeanor makes her want to add, _'_we are through' to the post-coital air, which an hour ago, had seemed impossible. 'We're through', she wants to say.

She can't. They haven't even started yet, goddamn him!


	9. Chapter 9

_Working on that 'love makes us do crazy things, jealousy can make us insane, desire can make us irrational'. Hmm, that's where this chapter is going :)_

* * *

><p><strong>TODAY:<strong>

Castle remembers a time during his teen years when his then-girlfriend discovered that he had kissed her worst enemy before her relationship with Richard Rogers began. His girlfriend was livid.

Not as livid as K. Beckett is when she tells him to go and have a shower at his own place, and uses the word _sweetheart_ as someone less lawful might use a gun.

He recalls a time when Meredith found out that he referred to their post-marriage physical relationship as like eating deep fried fun foods. She had been furious. Turned on, maybe, but fuming.

Um, not as furious at Detective Beckett as she stands with her hands on her hips, gritting her teeth together as she flings his cellphone on their bed of love. Until _now. _ It was a bed of love before he'd shown her the message, now it's like the remnants of lust and sex have combusted into a stove of stupidity and sentenced him to HELL.

Castle remembers how Gina responded to rumours he wanted to quit writing. _Extreme anger._ How Meredith coped with him spending money they just didn't have during the early days. _Blind rage. _ How a young starlet had vented after she realized she was a one-week sex-romp rather than 'future Mrs Castle' … how his interior designer had savaged at him after they broke-up … how his female neighbour had reacted after he admitted to running over her prize-winning rose plants that had blown down in a storm …

'At least it wasn't Ms Kitty,' he had said, referring to the feral cat he had _wanted_ to rundown.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing compared to the way Kate Beckett is currently killing him with a combination of death-stare (one-eyed, even more intimidating) agitated aghast, oily indignation, and perhaps — worst of all — the tint of hurt. It's there, in her single-eyed gaze and she doesn't even try to hide it.

He's a fool.

The very instant he hands her the phone, in a flurry of guilt, anxiety and mirth, he senses his biggest mistake even before it hits him in the face. He'd made a few in the last twelve hours. Castle is guilty about pushing her physically when she hasn't received the all clear, anxious about their now-not-gonna-happen platonic shower — now _that_ would have been a farce if he'd tried to ban all inappropriate touching …

Oh, it would have been soapy, slippery, so different to them together in a tub … _but he can't think about that now or he WILL die_ ...

And, he was jovial about the text from Ryan and Esposito, thought that Kate might need something funny to distract her from the fact that he couldn't coming back to bed, so he had pushed the words in her face before thinking about it. Before checking any of it, really.

_Holy shape-shift!_

As soon as her eyes flicker over the phone screen, something hard and mighty dies in Castle. It's replaced by a feeling of pure panic. It takes a millisecond to see exactly what he has done and a microsecond to react to her emotional whip-crack. He tries to step onto the front foot to avoid the array of hindsight missiles aimed at his head.

'Yeah, um, Kate? That's _so_ not what it looks like,' he starts, using his hands as a gesture of surrender. Upturned palms, charming smile with messy bed hair, puffed out chest in order to remind her that he's the man from her bed and heart, only moments before including her in on this joke. It's not funny. Her face is all about the unfunny, but he persists, as though words can suddenly render the entire story hilarious. 'This is something that happened just yesterday before you and I were—'

'I'd stop talking if I were you.'

She's so pissed off, Castle thinks he can see a thin spire of steam rising from where her eye-patch meets her skin. He acts as quickly as he can, but unfortunately when he's in Panic Beckett Mode, his filter is as flimsy as the string of words coming out of his mouth. He bumbles a bit. This annoys the hell out of him for a moment. Castle wishes he could butch up, deliver with confidence, not feel so damned emotionally set-upon when he's in the clear.

And then there's her attitude. If he wasn't so intent on putting this right immediately, just so she can go back to recovering and he can resume his daydreaming about their next night together, Castle might be annoyed at her mistrust.

_Did the last half-day mean nothing? Have the last three years not allowed Beckett to see the difference between errant playboy and loyal partner? Is she screwing with him? She KNOWS, damn it! She must know it's a bit of fun and she's playing with his head because he's too close. They're getting too close._

'C'mon, Kate! Lighten up, it's a _joke._'

If she does know, she's not sharing the slapstick. She's not falling all round the place, holding in her sides so her spleen doesn't erupt from her splitting skin. The fact that she pffts and cloaks herself in her glorious red robe, leaving him entirely naked except for his frown, tells Castle that she's boiling beneath that eye-patch. The fact she's not 'lightening up' has him reaching for his own boxers in a juggle of jingle and bobble. The fact that she's in his personal space, the blunt of her fingernail poking him at the base of his sternum with words spitting and buzzing, makes him realize that this is trouble.

This dream of a night, those hours of fulfillment, that togetherness he wants to replicate again and again and …

'A _joke? Really?_ You think this is a joke, Castle?'

He did. Before she takes the poke of her fingernail and skids it downwards from his diaphragm. _Damn! Where the hell are his boxers?_

'If you took time to really think about this and—'

'Now you think I'm overreacting?'

She turns, bends, finds his boxers in a flash of obvious anger and frustration. Picking them up, Kate holds them like they are coated in radioactive waste and shunts them in his general direction with a look of disdain. It's when she casts her eye towards the phone on the bed, curls her lip in an expression of disgust and points her finger towards her bedroom door, that Castle's panic turns to agitation. Everything escalates before he has the chance to douse the spot fire.

'It is a joke. Ryan sent that text.'

He reaches for the phone, trying to hook his legs through his boxers at the same time. He ends up on his knees, one hand grasping his cell, his face smothered in the duvet, making him feel like a clown on speed. Nobody's laughing. Castle would grin but he's so intent on proving the sext message came from the guys at the 12th, that his lips try to form more words. Instead, he's subjected to lying face-down in the scent of her — in the memory of their night together — and his brawn pleads with his brain to just make up. The Beckett smell is like a weapon of mess destruction on his resolve to prove that she's wrong about the message. About him, and his devotion to her.

Until …

'Now you're _lying_?'

She wraps her robe around herself, increasing her guise of self-protection, further reducing the flesh to which Castle was once privy. Damn her and her Beckett _'I won't allow myself to get too close in case I'm hurt by Richard Castle, untrustworthy cad'_ mantra! The fact she thinks he's lying about this? Enough to ignite the sensitive fuse that leads to his indignation TNT.

'No. Not lying … I don't lie, but I think you should know _that_ by now, Beckett. I—'

'Then why tell me that Ryan sent this text message?'

Whether it's because he's called her Beckett for the first time since they started this, or in reaction to his tone, Kate backs off physically but maintains the scathing look of disdain. Castle reads it every which-way, until his thoughts collide with emotion and he reverts to being angry. It's easier. If he's mad, he can't think too much about her simultaneously hating him, being repulsed by him, and distrusting his (previously well-loved) ass.

God, what he would do for a dose of morphine right about now. Not so much for his pain, but to return the aphrodisiac to this non-Aphrodite.

'I don't know what's pissing me off more,' she mumbles to herself, as he watches her step around to the far side of the bed. He stays where he is, adjusting his boxer shirts, taking a deep breath, running his hand through the bed-mess of his hair. It's not until she passes him in a run of red robe does Castle realize that she's retracing their (previously well-loved) steps into her bathroom and picking up all his clothes en route.

'I can't hear you,' he says, following her, wanting to either fix it or make her eat … eat … _what_ … humble pie? Nope! When he spots the (previously well-loved) bathtub, Castle knows he wants to make her eat bubbles. Followed by an elixir of morphine and meditation music. 'What are you saying? Um, my ears are _still_ burning from when you called me a liar.'

She rounds on him. Her jaw is square, set. Her eyes oval, her fists balled into knobbly spheres. Her hair? Nondescript of shape, but so sexily disheveled, he wants to circle her and spire his hands through it. Some women look like fishwives with oblong red noses when they are enraged. Kate Beckett is even hotter when roused to this level. If the time was right and he thought it might help, Castle would evoke his inner neanderthal, barrel her up against her shower screen and kiss her into submission. If that's the right word? No. Kiss her into an epicentre of trust where there's no need for armour.

'I _said,_' she raises her voice to ridiculous levels. If Castle wasn't so annoyed, he'd laugh. 'That I don't know what's pissing …' she throws his balled-up shirt at his chest. 'Me …' she flings his pants at his feet. 'Off …' one of his socks follows. 'MORE …' and his other sock at his head. It hits him in the eye. Of all places.

Oh, the coincidence! It socks.

'The fact that you're lying to me, lying about _lying _OR the fact I …I let ...I … _Goddamn it, Castle .._.'

She stalks towards him, making to jab him in the sternum again, but just as she's about to jerk, Castle grabs her hand in a move reminiscent of the time she went for her gun and he kissed her as cover.

_Kissed her for cover? My (previously well-loved) ass!_ Cover has never entered the equation. He only ever kissed her because he's wanted to — needed to — and so has she, even on that night he pretended it was all about the job.

Now? She's looking at his mouth, squinting her unpatched eye directly into the gap of his lips and wondering. Castle can read her curiosity as clearly as if she'd spoken the words 'are you game enough to kiss me, Rick? I'm mad enough to kick your (previously well-loved) balls, but you look like you wanna kiss me. Do it! _Dare you!_'

He's close enough to feel her breath on his throat, emotional enough to imagine her heart leaping from her chest and battering him into oblivion, hot enough to want to plunge his tongue against the sting of her mouth.

'You're calling me a liar,' he manages to grunt. To his own ears, his voice sounds like he's been sucking charcoal through a rock face. 'You owe me an apology, _Kate_.'

'I owe you nothing, _Rick_.'

She catches his wrist in her free hand and yanks her other out of his grasp. Castle stands his ground. This time, Kate doesn't back away, but continues to invade his personal space, without the sharp fingernails to his sternum.

'I know all my colleague's cell numbers by heart. I know their caller IDs, the precinct's undercover numbers, their home numbers. Hell, I even know what Ryan had for breakfast, Castle, so do _not_ tell me that the … the … that …' She loses eye contact for a second and Castle has a moment of remorse. He might just be sorry and want to fix this now, beg her forgiveness because one of their friends has sent a joking, unfunny text. Somehow it's his fault — Castle will take the blame, it's not her! He will fix this ...

'Don't treat me like one of the fools you _usually _sleep with, Castle …'

_And maybe not!_

'Hey, you know what? That's enough!'

Yeah, he sounds like he's speaking to Alexis, but something about Kate's irrationality is reminding him of a teenaged tantrum. A very sexy tantrum, sure, but a misplaced, illogical rant, accompanied by clothes throwing and chest poking. It's all so passionate and fevered.

'I'll say when it's enough,' she counters, squirting her gaze at his mouth again, moving forward so that her robed breast is fluffing at his nipples, causing them to leer and groan — um, maybe that's his eyes and mouth? But Castle would swear that the leering and groaning is happening at chest level. 'And if there's enough of _anything_, it's your lying ways.'

Without thinking, Castle presses his face down and forward so that they're not only standing toe-to-toe, but nose-to-nose. He wants her to smell his anger in exactly the same way he's detecting hers. 'Let's ring Ryan, Beckett. I've told you already that I don't LIE. If you're so sure I'm lying, let's rule out all the evidence. That's the way you work, isn't it? In your job?'

There's less than a bee's dick of width between them, but he strains further into her so that her unpatched eye is so blurred to his sight, she looks like a malformed Cyclops. A very hot, Cyclops, yes, but a one-eyed freak nonetheless. 'You rule _out_ stuff! In your job, in your personal life!'

'And what's _that_ supposed to mean, Castle?'

'Exactly what it sounds like! You wanna believe the worst of me, just because we've had the best time, just because we're getting too close. You wanna rule me out because of what you're feeling. The best thing, ever.'

She scoffs. He feels the hurl of fire and brimstone cake his lips. If he licked them now, he'd taste her ire. 'You're the best, Castle? Is that what you think? That I'm rulin' you out because you're the best.'

'I _am! We are!'_ He might as well say it. Keep up the bravado he was letting slip away over the course of this night when he thought she was starting to see him for who he really is, rather than the Castle caricature. 'Whether you want to admit it or not is up to you.'

He tries to wear a grin, wishing she would dare to slap it off him so that they could start diffusing this situation, but they are so close together, she probably won't be able to see it. He tries anyway. He feels her frown against the bridge of his nose.

'Depends if you're ready to admit lying. Who is she Castle? The texter? A fan of your writing? Someone you're seeing but haven't gotten around to telling the paparazzi yet? Oh, or telling me?'

'I'm not seeing anyone! It was Ry—'

'Maybe a third ex-wife you might have cheated on?'

When he'd told her it was 'enough' a few moments before, Castle had meant it. When she hurls words about cheating and ex-wives in a random attempt to blame him for other things he just didn't do — wasn't doing now — he can't stop himself unleashing. And maybe this is what he needs to do to make Beckett realize? She can be happy. _They _can be happy, but it's all about her inaccurate perceptions.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, he raises his voice. He has to give Beckett credit, she simply does not flinch. Her own voice escalates in rebuttal, and Castle can feel his eyes bulging. He's sure her nostrils are flared and they're both spitting chips. Or chitting ships.

'There are TWO ex-wives in my life. I didn't cheat on either of them, there's never been a third, and the last thing I would ever, _ever_ do is cheat on you.'

'Pity you won't get that chance!'

'There's no pity 'bout _that,_ Beckett! The only pity is that you can't get it through your skull — your thick head-of-hair skull — that Ryan sent the damn message, but you're too stubborn to even try to see it!'

'Not stubborn. I just know every single number and that's _not_ Ryan's number.'

'It is! It is Ryan's number!'

'It's _not_ Ryan's number. I know all of the—'

'It's his _other_ number.'

'Castle? Ryan has no number that I don't know about! When are you going to get that through your … your ... what the hell was it you said? Your thick head-of-hair skull? Just admit it! You're lying to me, I'm an idiot that slept with you, and as soon as that happened, you're on to something else.' He watches her champ and toss. She's so raw, he can feel her muscles twitch. '_Someone_ else.'

_'What?_ You're ridiculous!'

'At least I'm not a liar.'

He jostles against her to raise the phone into the inch of space between them. He's searching for Ryan, praying that Ryan will call, will SMS, will do something to show himself as the Sexter of Mischief. Castle scans the phone again. 'There it is, there's Ryan's number … _ohhh _… it's … um ...'

Okay. So it's not as obvious as Castle had thought it was. Okay, he and Ryan rarely call each other, but he did see Ryan keel over in hilarity following the same text the previous day. And, oh God, he recalls that Ryan and Esposito had mouthed something about the phone ... something about the phone … _urgh_ ... _ohno ..._

He didn't expect RYAN'S CALL ID to be screeching across the phone, but he did anticipate a small life-buoy of help from his precinct bros. The bastards. He'll never shout them a round at The Old Haunt again. In fact, he'll ban their brawny, cop asses from the place for the rest of their woebegotten lives.

'Well?' She's taken a step back, stands with her hands on her hips and waits.

'It's Jenny's. It's been sent from Jenny's phone.'

He wonders why he has said that out loud. He's thinking about the name 'Jenny' and why Kate hasn't instantly recognized her as Ryan's fiance, when a damp, balled towel meets the side of his head. Most towels wouldn't hurt a man as tough as himself. This one seems lined with a bunch of steel-capped stilettos aimed at his temple.

'You and Jenny can go to Hell, Castle. Take your stuff and get the hell out!'

'There's a hell of a lot of hell round here,' he mumbles, flicking open his crumpled shirt and putting one arm through. 'If you're too overwrought to realize that I'm talking about _Jenny_, Ryan's fiance, then I've got no clue what to do next.'

_'Overwrought?'_

'And you call yourself a detective?'

'Oh, my God, Castle, what? Over_wrought?_' she says, curling her lip, stepping up to the plate where there's suddenly no room for Castle to finish dressing as she's well inside his batting box. He stands with his shirt draped open, his boxer shorts askew, his mouth prepared for more verbal spray. '_I'm_ overwrought?'

'Sure. And a damn bit irrational, Kate.'

As she clamps her fists by her side in angry gesture, her mouth collides with his chin. It must make her more frustrated. With fire flushing from the nose of the dragon, Beckett has him in a police double-grab to his opened shirt before Castle can say that he doesn't mind if she's irrational and overwrought, as long as she STOPS calling him a liar.

It's so different to when she grasped at his lapels in The Old Haunt. It's equally as unsettling, but the buzz of the fight is so intense, it's not nearly as pleasurable.

'Just—'

She ploughs her lips against his. It's bruising, confrontational and Castle closes his eyes on every fantasy he's ever had about raw, rough sex with this woman. He wants it … _no he doesn't_ … God, but he always has, and the bathtub would be nothing compared to if Beckett threw him against the tiled wall of her bathroom and fucked him.

_But he doesn't want that ...he's in love with her … he doesn't want it rough ..._

Excuse me?

He pretends he doesn't.

He's really does not want it rough …

He doesn't. (He might have thought about it, once or twice?) On the Precinct desk, against the coffee machine where the expresso beans compacted and steam hisssssed …

But now? He doesn't. It's all about the loving.

There's no need to be rough.

Is there? _But aren't they fighting?_ He's a liar, she's a bossy bitch detective with trust issues?

It's rough. He's ready. In a way.

Castle opens his mouth under the plunder of Beckett's assault. Her tongue plunges, compresses, duals, and he hears a hitch in her throat when it catches his canines. Her teeth gnash against anything they contact — his teeth, the corners of his lips, the soft tissue where his lips meet his skin. He lets her barrage him into her wall — or something else that's solid? Could it be that elephant in the room the size of his fantasy? Beckett's grip on his shirt is so intense, he feels the fabric tear a bit as she shoves him against the hard, vertical surface.

She's on him. All over him. Fingers pinching his nipples, teeth at his neck, one hand descending to where he's certain that he doesn't want it too abusive, but instead, she doesn't touch him there at all. She catches the sharp of her nails against his inner thigh and it hurts like sweet, sexy torture. It's painful. It's nothing like the feeling in his heart when she flung words at him. It's physical pain. She should totally moonlight.

Her robe is still as closed as the case they worked in Dungeon Alley.

_Fuck, yeah, but he wants it rough!_

'You nipped me,' he wolves into her open mouth, pushing back almost as vigourously as she's pressing. He uses the opportunity to pivot and fling, wrenching himself off the wall and laying her firmly against the spot he'd been occupying. His lower body traps hers in a no-exit pin.

'I nipped you, you lied to me. We're almost even.'

Beckett pulls on his ears, jamming her mouth against his, pushing her fingernails into his shoulders. She rakes them across the back of his neck, synchronizing the crashing of her teeth into his, the grabbing of his butt, the bucking of her hips. It's rough. He's not _that_ ready.

'I didn't lie. I _don't _lie.'

He wonders what it would be like to force the issue. To push her to the point of begging or wanting it so damn much that she might take back all these thoughts and hurts. There's no time to experiment. Everything is being kissed way too fast.

'I'm telling you that you did. Lie.'

He's not like that. He'd rather soften her, wear down her defenses, gain her trust through love and attention to detail. Even though Castle wants to pretend he's a Viking, he's really a court poet, happier with the woo than the woo-den boats … um, the slaughter, rape and pillage of the object of his desire.

'I've never lied to you ...'

She sneers against his cheek. Beckett moves her lips over to his chin, the underside where his whiskers scrap at her lying taunts, and she mixes up the kisses and the nips.

'… so stop it. It's just a Ryan joke on Jenny's phone.'

'You stop lying.'

'_You_ stop pretending you don't know the text is a joke, just so we can't get closer. You're so afraid to let me in. Well, guess what? I'm—'

'You keep on sayin' that, Castle, you can go the hell home. _Now.'_

It's almost like the final tolling of the bell in the boxing ring. One athlete has swung all the punches, the other fighter has defended and attacked and got a bloodied patch over the eye. The knockout blow. It's hers, on him. And maybe, it's his on her. His continual denial, his inability to simply _call_ Ryan and make things right because he's been so offended by her lack of trust. His hapless response to a kiss bathed in anger, primed to punish. He still wants it, and it disgusts him.

But she's in this ring too.

Her illegal strikes to his ego. Her total inability to believe. Her bantamweight attempts to be happy which are failing; she's been beaten in this type of bout before. It makes her as venomous as a ragged street fighter, as wary as a punch drunk kid.

He avoids her lips and looks at her, arms braced either side of her head.

'Go on. I knew you'd go, Castle. Go and be a _sweetheart_, writer boy.'

They're both KO'd. Suddenly Castle is so very, very tired of punching the air. Pushing away from her, he doesn't give in to his urge to gentle a kiss and show her how much he wants things right between them. He's so hurt, he wants to pummel a punching bag.

Castle doesn't even bother dressing properly. He makes himself as decent as he can on the way to the door, and refuses to look back when she warns him not to call her 22 times 'when you feel like owning up to the lie.'

He does give in to the need to slam her door. He hopes that the Buddha statue is shaken to its core and the furious fiasco of his heartbeat will ricochet through her apartment. It had been so much easier in The Old Haunt where the only things at stake were a pool game, an untucked shirt, a lingerie of red and an injury to the eye.

Finding the time on his phone, Castle notices that it's an inappropriate hour to head into The Haunt, but he's going anyway. He'll text Ryan and Esposito, meet them there and have a drink before Ryan speeds his way to the altar in a couple of days time. Unless he picks the leprechaun up and throws him into the Hudson for his role in the texting tease.

(Previously well-loved) Jenny too. The soon-to-be newly weds deserve to be as happy as Castle and Beckett.


	10. Chapter 10

She's a woman of evidence. She reads body language like she would the latest, greatest mystery novel — with clarity, certainty, even an ounce of enjoyment about everything she understands.

It's a skill, and Kate has it in droves. A change in eye contact, a nervous play with the sleeve of a shirt, an erratic flicker of eyelashes, and she's on top of the situation as readily as she's on top … on top … on top of ...

As she slumps on top of her bed, flopping down so that her back hits the divot of delight they'd formed earlier that morning, Kate knows that she's not on top of anything at the moment. Or anyone.

She's a woman of substance, of training, of truth without the bullshit games. She doesn't cry a lot, and when she does, it's usually due to innate empathy or a deep-seated sorrow that's pinged at her social justice strings. She doesn't weep over _men! _ She doesn't diva-down with her girls and play drama-vista about break ups or misunderstandings.

The detective weighs up. She gathers facts, balances ledgers like an accountant in disguise, but instead of crediting and debiting money, she works with victims and murderers. She's a woman, not a tweenie, not a temper tantrum-throwing uber-wench.

Then there's the Kate Beckett that's involved with Rick Castle.

_Shit._ She mopes around the apartment, looking for a single inch of floor space that doesn't still reek of him. Is that what she is? _Involved_ with him? She supposes so, although she's been involved with him from the moment she approached him at the book launch and asked him in for questioning. The difference this morning is purely physical. They had sex, like half the world probably did last night. Why the fuck should that make such a big difference?

She sighs like the bitch-diva she obviously is, spending a heady moment deciding whether to fizzle down into the couch cushions or to take a boiling hot shower. Kate looks around her living space. His flamboyance was everywhere when he was here, nude, but it's dappled away to simple reminders of Rick. His sweetness exudes from the kitchen as she remembers his attempt to soft-shoe so as not to wake the non-present Lanie. His scent bathes the hallway, the areas between the bedroom and her bathroom. His sexuality is not visible, but she finds herself restless and raunchy just thinking about him, and her mind invariably turns to the consummation of three years of play.

_And that's the difference! _They've scratched the itch, but Kate's body has erupted into a massive Castle rash. It's so irritating and distracting, she cannot think of any way to scrub it from her body.

A hot shower? A scalding stream of stinging water, hitting her skin in all the right spots, exfoliating Richard Castle from each and every pore of her body?

_Yeah, right!_

She's a fool. There's no way she'll be able to wash this man right outta her hair. Perhaps she needs to cut the entire crop off, shave her head, sit in an acid bath? Even that won't expunge the feeling of his skin against hers or dull the rampant remnants of heat. That she could let this happen — succumb to a night of the single-most phenomenal sex she's ever experienced — all to have a text interrupt extended pleasure, is what's pissing Kate off the most.

She thinks.

She hates him. She thinks, or are her feelings somewhere between extreme dislike and jealousy? Or, is she most upset with herself? For losing it, for shedding her Castle virginity, for becoming another notch on his beanpole?

If she had a chance, she thinks, wondering whether she should drink water or down a beer with a chaser of Jack, she would definitely leave a notch on _that_ beanpole. Just to remind him that sleeping with Kate Beckett is more than a one-night show, especially if there's another starlet waiting in the wings.

Evidence says that there _is_. Another starlet. The text from the unknown number, the look of _'oh, holy shit'_ on his face when she'd pointed out that it wasn't Ryan's ID, the haste with which he inserted the excuse about Jenny.

Criminal history says that there is someone else too. His former wives, his one-nighters, the parade of woman who want to get between his covers with as much ease as they do his hardbacks. His gaggle of ex-wives — okay, only two, but really goose-like — and the actresses that want a piece of his script.

But, by God, he's got more than a script's worth down there!

Her eye hurts just thinking about him physically. Kate imagines what it would be like to cop an eyeful when she's got both orbs operational, but now he's a liar, a scoundrel and she cannot stand him, that's unlikely.

Yet her gut instinct wars with the evidence and her consideration of his criminal history. As she fluffs about, wandering between the comfortable couch option and the blister of the shower, Kate thinks it might be okay to sit in the corner and wail. Or go back to bed, pull her duvet over her head and weep. It's not like her, sure, but either is living in this state of limbo. She doesn't even feel like constructing a 'Castle as Bastard board', where she could plot all of the facts she has in her head about this criminal. That's what he is! He has murdered her ability to see straight (or see out of two eyes) and robbed her of her perspective.

Kate chooses the slow-cooker of a shower, and damn it! All she does is think of him and how he'd feel under the water, how the slickness of soap would schloop along his … _yeah, well this element of the shower is pointless!_ Instead of washing Castle thoughts away, it just cleans areas of her body that are already missing his touch, and makes her skin throb with the knowledge of what she's denying herself.

It's better not to know what he's like._ What he's like at it._ Now, she cannot turn her mind off the fact that Castle is King of tactile loving, Jack of technique and Rook of finding any nook that's available to explore. She turns off the water instead and prepares to scream into a pillow.

But it smells of Rickness.

She selects the couch. He didn't sit on it during this latest visit, but the fabric creams like him anyway._ For God's sake!_ Even the coffee pot has his fingerprints, the wine glass owns the outline of his mouth, even her bed coverings scream 'Take me, oh, Castle. Oh God, take me now,' and Kate realizes that all of the fixtures in her apartment want him as much as she does.

_Fucking traitorous pieces of crap lying around her place._ Oh, and she may well be having a post-sexual breakdown.

It's not like her to sit around and wallow. She might recline on her couch, stare into space for a while, and if it has hurt badly enough, she might shed a gentle tear or two. Different to crying. Way different to wasting time inspecting her navel ring, the lines on her palm, the non-notches on her bedpost and his beanpole.

The next time she finds herself thinking about what she usually does, Kate is alerted by her cellphone pipping at her from somewhere. She hasn't been asleep. She's sure of it. It's as though time has passed in the blink of an eye, and the patch that covers her other has clouded her judgement and awareness of the day.

She _never_ does this! Vague the day away, but when she reaches for her cell and checks the time, Kate realizes that she does do this now. She is that type of girl. Damn the type of man she's attracted to, take him lock down with a callous murderer, because it's not even his caller ID!

Where the hell is he and why isn't he calling her to talk about 'it?' Okay, so her instinct tells her that the text was a joke, but the cold, hard evidence points to Castle erecting his drawbridge in a different, kinda slutty moat.

'De-tective Beckett? _Dayum,_ but what have you been doing to Castle, girl? He's … he's … um, he's a mess. Worse'n your eye after Poke Day, and I don't have a patch to help him.'

Lanie's voice is like a wake-up call in her ear, but she's still certain she hasn't been sleeping. And where the hell is Castle's phone call? Isn't this the point in the piece of popular fiction where the sexy, forlorn guy rings the heart-achy, hot girl and they say things like:

_'You're beautiful. I'm sorry.'_ Him, naturally.

_'I know. I am quite beautiful. And it's okay.'_

_'You know it's my fault, right? I'm Richard Cad Castle, I only love you, but sometimes I lie.'_

_'I will only forgive you if you never lie again, buy me the world, massage my feet, never look at another woman and swear unto me. Then it's all okay. It is okay.'_

_'Is it really? Is it really okay? I was so wrong. Will you forgive me?'_

_'I will. I will if you come over and do me. Twill make everything alright if you just come over and … just come over. Just … just … come … me too. With the coming. Now.'_

In fiction, the man errs, but he's still so desirable and so ruggedly hard for his woman. She is always desirable and placated by his drunken tears over the phone. She forgives, because she's feminine and wonderful and sensual. Oh, and she wants sex. She wants it more than her next breath of fresh air, but only with him.

If she could take solace with a replacement, Kate might consider doing so just to get the urge out of her system. But when the need, the solution, is all Castle, only the original will do. _ Even if he's a cad? _ Yeah. Especially if he's a repentant one.

'Kate?' says Lanie, her voice ricocheting through the phone and zinging Beckett from her romanticizing. 'He's at the bar. He's saying stuff. Unfortunately, sweetie, there's been a _huuuuuuge_ misunderstanding.'

Kate thinks about making herself a coffee while she's on the phone to Dr Parish. Everything about the hot, rich beverage spanks of Castle flavour, so in order to nullify that yearning, she finds a bottle of scotch in the cupboard above her sink. She rarely drinks the stuff, but sometimes in a cop's life, the golden elixir of alcoholic heat is the only thing that hits the spot when there's been murder, mishap, a maniac on the loose.

Or, if it involves sleeping with Richard Castle. And wanting him more than she ever thought possible.

'Right. A huge misunderstanding? He's ready to apologize then?' She tries a false bravado that she doesn't really own. If Lanie was in her apartment, she would have looked at her closely and laughed in her face. But she's not, so Kate can be self-righteous and unsure. 'It's about time.'

Kate hears Lanie's choking in what seems like disbelief. _That'd be right._ Castle has probably gone into The Old Haunt, bought the entire place three rounds of drinks, and woven a story of woe to anyone who'll listen. He's such a phenomenal spinner of fiction, he'd have everyone believing that he'd met a woman who sparked his jaded muse, offered her the world, only to have her cheat on him and break his open, soft-centred heart.

She would slap him in the chest if she could. To compensate, she sloshes the bottle of scotch towards the short tumbler she's placed on the kitchen counter. She spills it. Pity it's not Castle's blood, although then fate would turn her vampiric and she'd wanna drink it until she's purely in it for the true blood orgasmic stakes. He's always gonna be desirable, whether she has fangs or not.

_God, she dislikes this man with the passion of a thousand murder sites_.

'Not quite up to apologizing yet, girl. He's vocal, for sure, but it's not about the sorries …'

Kate can hear commotion in the background. Lanie tells her she's switching to speaker phone, and she detects what's really going on. The Old Haunt seems to be awash with music and something akin to joviality — and she's here wallowing on the couch? She should be out finding herself a ripped, studded manwhore and screwing her sorrows into oblivion if Castle's having a wow of a time at his bar!

_Argh! _But she detests this man! She wants to slam his head into the closest bar table and handcuff him backwards. Oh, and then the imagery of him naked and wanting her rolls into her head-ached mind and stings her into more snarky overtones. 'I guess he's serenading you all, Lanie? Telling the whole bar about what we've done? His newest con_quest?'_

She tosses the scotch against her uvula. She wishes that didn't sound so dirty, because it conjures thoughts about Castle touching her non-uvula (which isn't anywhere near her throat and responds so much better to anything she could swallow!) And, yeah, it makes her want it more. _Him_ more, AND WHY IS THIS MAN SO UNDER HER SKIN AND ANYWHERE NEAR HER GODDAMN UVULA?

'Well?' she snaps, telling her former friend to get her the fuck off speaker phone, in a somewhat nicer way. 'What's he doing? Jesus, is that him _singing?_

Lanie must do something to her phone. The background noise tunnels into ambience and her ear quickens with the sound of Lanie's words. They're harsher than normal, direct, telling her she's now on private handset. There's no time for a sarcastic comment and question from Kate. It pisses her off so much, she almost hangs up on the ME.

'He hasn't told anyone what's happened between you two, sweetie, but I have a pretty good idea.'

Kate tries the cynicism. 'Well isn't _he_ just the perfect gentleman—'

'Even though I've tried to ask him what's wrong! All he'll say is that the joke the boys played with the text went so bad, they might as well have cut off his balls.'

'Yeah, Lanie. That'd work. If he had any ba—'

_'Kate?_ Shuddup! Just for a minute, okay!' Lanie doesn't draw breath. If she had paused, Kate might have had time to sneer. 'That texting was all part of some good natured ribbing. My guy has shown me the previous texts. Jaysus, Jenny is even down here and she's got her phone back from Ryan — _are you hearing this girl?_ Jenny's realized what's going on, and she's not even a damn detective! She feels so bad about what's happened, she's sitting by Castle, hugging him—'

'Jenny! _Jenny's _hugging _Castle?_'

Beckett doesn't realize she's said the words aloud, but it causes a storm in Lanie Parish's teacup.

'Of course she's hugging Castle! So did I, so did Kevin, for Chris'sake! He's … he's … he's …'

'Broken?'

Lanie snorts. 'He's so damn huggable, you! You have no idea.'

Downing some more scotch, Kate huffs into the phone. 'No, Lanie! That's _my_ line! _He_ has no idea! And what's with the hugging?' _ How dare they get hugs when she's got nothin'!_

'Castle's a keeper. Come down here and keep him—'

'He told me I was overwrought, Lanie. He said I was being irrational!'

Lanie sounds like she's choking on a drink. 'Imagine that? _You_ irrational about Richard Castle? Now _that_ I gotta see'.

'Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Doctor.'

'Oh honey?' says Lanie, appearing distracted by something else. 'I was trying to be genuine. Hey, though, about that guy Castle? You've gotta admit, girl. It's the silence about what's gone on, the sad-eyes when he spoke about the text, and the singing? So fine.'

Lanie breaks for breath. A millisecond. 'And, Kate? All he said about what happened between you? He was sooooo discreet. He just lowered his gaze, grimaced into his drink and whispered_ 'It was one of the most important moments of my life. She is the most important moment of my life, and a gentleman never, ever tells …'_

'Lanie? You've gotta be kidding me? He's a writer. Of fiction—'

'Girl! You're crazy as Perlmutter's mind, and you know it! If it's evidence that you want, Jenny's down here holding her own phone and my boy is interrogating Detective Ryan about why they used Jenny's phone in the first place …'

Lanie breaks off and Kate can hear an increase in the crescendo of the music in the background. 'Gotta go, Beckett, but get your stubborn, 'fraidy ass down here, and soon. I'm fanning myself all over again coz your Castle is starting to sing 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. Wow-wee, the man is sexy when he's a little bit—'

'He's singing? _Again?'_

'He's got Guitar Hero out and this other karaoke gadget. You should have heard him and Jenny singing 'Don't Go Breakin' My Heart' and a group rendition of 'Piano Man'! It was fabulous. Although as the night's wearing on and he's had one more than he probably should? Your man is a-singin' the blues and he's mighty alluring, gal. Mighty damn fine.'

'He's singing with Jenny? _Wha?_ Lanie! He's singing the blues? Lanie, get back on the phone, for the love of—'

She's gone, as are the remnants of the day. When Kate looks out of her apartment window and considers what she's heard — and what her gut instinct has told her is true — she sees she's spent hours in a state of nothingness. She's so sure she hadn't been sleeping, but how is it that so much time has elapsed, yet so little has been done? Except think of him. Fantasize about him, hate him, expect him to call and apologize, anticipate him dating the texter, getting married for a third time and having a dozen sexy, wonderful experiences …

_Get your stubborn, 'fraidy ass down here._

Lanie had been right on both accounts, stubborn and afraid. Her friend had been remiss about mentioning the final fault in the trilogy of Beckett blunders when it came to her and Rick Castle in the last 24 hours. She'd been wrong. Oh, and she'd been mistrustful, perhaps a little irrational, bitchy, agitated. But _overwrought?_

Nah. She's not owning that.

That can wait till their next fight.

* * *

><p>As a throwback to Ryan and Jenny's party the week before last, Beckett wears a tight, fairly demur red top and jeans into The Old Haunt. She cabs it. By her estimation, she's only had a couple of scoffs of scotch, but the heady knowledge that she's going to his bar to see him is adding to her nervous distraction. She doubts she could drive as skillfully as usual. She's navigating new territory with this rehearsed apology and declaration as it is, so it's easier to steer with conviction if she's being driven towards the destination.<p>

It's harder to pull back, turn around and go home.

Her stalk into The Old Haunt is equally as rehearsed. She's perfected the cop-walk long ago, but for this evening, she adds the Beckett swagger, the use of heels to create the illusion of extreme confidence, superior height, total control. What she doesn't realize yet is that the tallness of her shoes will mean little to a scene if she's asked to jump in with both feet.

The crowd is thin. It's not 9 o'clock on a Saturday, it's a weeknight and the booths are patchy, with a regular crowd about to shuffle out. Kate immediately hears the strains of Castle singing and her gaze is drawn to a small gathering of fans that are sitting near him, smiling, clapping, Castle-worshipping in general.

Naturally, he's in the middle of singing Elton John's 'The Bitch is Back'. Kate leans against the bar closest to the karaoke, but due to the layout of The Old Haunt, she's offered a little privacy while still being able to check out the scene. If she expected him to be through singing by now, that she would have found him alone, head against the counter and nursing his nth drink, she's wrong for the second time in a day. Although Lanie warned her, Kate had anticipated Castle would be tired of entertaining his small audience with a tuneful serenade:

_I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch_

_Oh the bitch is back_

_Stone cold sober as a matter of fact_

_I can bitch, I can bitch_

_`Cause I'm better than you ..._

Apparently not. And there's _nothing_ about the Elton John song that could be considered bluesy.

By the time the song is finished, Castle is already fumbling through the list for his next number. Ryan, Esposito, their girls and a couple of staff members are encouraging him, but Kate can see from her vantage point that he is not getting up in a hurry. He's sitting on a barstool, struggling to keep his balance as he reaches over to touch the screen of the karaoke.

'Thinkthisone'll do it,' he slurs, clapping Esposito on the back as her colleague grabs the other microphone, preparing to duet with the now serious-faced 'bitch is back' Castle.

'Aw, c'mon man!' says Javier, rolling his eyes in the direction of Lanie. 'Not this song. It's too … it's way too depressing and—'

'It's aboot lurve, Javi,' coughs Castle into his microphone, alternating between sad-clown expression and that of perennial entertainer. 'It's about being in lurve, the heart, the sorrow, the … the love …. _oh ..._

Kate doesn't know whether to rush the stage, tackle the microphone from his hand and make a public apology, or simply appear by his side and ask to talk to him. About being sorry and wrong. This is such alien territory for her, she might as well be from the planet between Uranus and Dorketta, unable to mix it up or communicate with heart-sore humans.

'No one wants to hear this one, bro.' Esposito tries to touch the screen and select Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive', but Castle is too powerful of voice and convinced that this is the song for the moment. He opens with a gorgeously-weighted:

_I was all right for a while, I could smile for a while_

_But I saw you last night you held my hand so tight_

_As you stopped to say hello_

_Oh, you wished me well, you couldn't tell_

_That I've been crying over you, crying over you …_

To which Esposito sighs, wafts his microphone below his mouth and bleats, 'I _knew_ I'd have the KD Lang part!'

The solemn, averagely sung (by Esposito, at least) version of 'Crying'' lasts all of one verse and a chorus before Beckett can't help herself. Her hip pushes against the bar and she moves forward.

She manifests. Although she wanted to find him under the radar, her appearance at The Old Haunt is similar to the coverage of the wedding between Wills and Kate. Everyone looks, everyone judges, everyone considers her butt and votes it sexiest by far ...

'… 'I was crying, crying, cry … i … ing …._ Oh, HEY …_'

Castle spots her the instant Lanie does. Kate watches her friend motion to Esposito to cut his attempts at warbling, but Javier thinks Lanie is making hand movements indicating a quick shag behind the karaoke machine. He drops his microphone, jumps out of his seat and says 'seeya later, bro' to his singing partner.

Lanie stays put. So does Castle, but he's more vocal.

'Oh, ho, ho! Lookit here! Whatdowe have here? Ba-ba-barooooom! It's not Wonder Woman, guise. It's not the Bat-bat-bat Gal. It's betterer than that … way, _way_ betterer ...'

'Betterers not a word,' she whispers, gently.

Kate keeps balance, steps forward into the fray and nods a head in the direction of Lanie, Ryan and the staff. She wonders if it'd be too much to clamp her hand over Castle's mouth, but he suddenly stands with his mic, towering over her due to the small platform stage he's been sitting on.

Kate wishes she'd worn her highest, booster heels.

'It's the … the … spectacular, the sexah, ohhhhhhh, the so dang fine thing … guys? Lookit who tis. Tits NOT Nikki Heat. Tit's Beckett. The Migggggghty Finnnneeee Ball-Breaker Beckett … that's who tits. Tits her!'

His voice _booms_. It's the usual resonance and intonation, multiplied by two hundred percent volume. Kate wouldn't be surprised if her aunt could hear it. In Hawaii!

'Hey, Castle,' she starts quietly, frowning a one-eyed look in Lanie's direction. The small group are still milling around, obviously entertained by Castle on Show and Beckett on Trial. Kate can tell by their collective grins, but she dismisses them for now. 'I wonder if we could have a word? Please, Rick?'

She's speaking to his belly button, so in an attempt to get onto the platform and take the mic out of his hand, she pivots on her back heel and pushes upward. She's accidentally blocked by Ryan, who moves one way, then the next, to try and avoid a collision with his colleague. In the end, they bump into one another and Ryan laughs.

Kate doesn't. 'Ryan? Get outta my way. I wanna go talk to your girlfriend up there, see what's up with him, and you're not helping.' She hisses the last bit. Makes Ryan even more giggly.

'Beckett? I don't think Castle wants to talk to you.'

'OH, but I doooooo. I totally doooooo. You comin' up to singalong, Kate? Coming to sing wif Ricky? We could due-ah togeths. We'd rock a song 'bout lyin' and cheatin'. What say ya, _Katieeeee_? A due-ah? Or, as it's sometimes known, a _duet_'

Beckett breathes. She tells herself to butch up and face the music — with singable puns — rather than flee the scene, grab a cab, crawl into her apartment and wash her own hair. She's trying. So damn much. She's trying …

And then Ryan smirks! So does Esposito. It coincides with Castle saying something — into that fucking loud microphone — about 'Kate Beckett being so beautiful, it hurts so much to look at her that it makes him want to poke his own eye out. With a pool cue. Just to be like her. Coz she's so beautiful, but she's hard work, sometimes ...'

Ryan laughs. _Stupid, stupid man, Kevin._

Kate sees red. Both eyes, but she turns her good one on Ryan. 'Shouldn't you be checking the facts about Bonnie Tyler in the Crackersaurus case? What about financials? Have you guys done that with—'

'We've checked them. Of course, Beckett, we've done it! Months ago,' smirks Ryan, exchanging a glance of sympathy with a now-dancing Castle. What the hell?

'Well check it again! And if you want to get to your wedding in two days time, check it AGAIN. And while you're at it, I want a full report on the immorality of sending texts from other people's phones without authorization and—'

Esposito and Ryan's laughter interrupts her mini rant. It makes Beckett so angry, she nearly imports a murder board into The Old Haunt, lines everyone up against it, and shoots 'em all down with a large-orifice-making rifle. It's only when Lanie says 'we're going, gal, but you remember your ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow, okay?' and Ryan taunts 'you were _so _wrong about Castle getting a text from another hottie. It was me all along … how _bad_ do you feel?' that Kate remembers what she needs to say to Castle.

She wants to tell him.

'Can you get everyone outta here, Esposito? I want the place shut down in five.'

Esposito looks like he's going to poke some more fun until Lanie pokes him. With Ryan out the way, Kate steps on to the platform and makes to move around the karaoke machine to talk to the still-dancing and singing Castle. She feels Lanie's hand rest on her arm before she can move.

'We all have to admit we're wrong sometime, babe. He's not gonna hold it against you. He just wants ta hold himself against you.'

Kate grins. It's wry. 'Okay. I suppose you think you know that for sure?'

'Just look at him, will ya?'

She does, and as she takes her time to consider the man she's about to apologize to, he flicks her a look and a jauntily sung Eurythmics lyric, 'Would I lie to you? Would I lie to you, honey…?'

* * *

><p>The joint is clear in ten minutes flat.<p>

Without her asking, Castle drops onto his barstool as the light go out over The Old Haunt and they're pitched into semi-darkness. It makes it easier, somehow, for her to say what she needs to say, even though the temptation to stand over him, to lecture him as a detective — a woman — is there. She doesn't. She reminds herself she's in the wrong.

'So? Beckett?'

He's not as amused without an audience of friends. Neither is he that happy to see her anymore. Maybe the drinks are wearing off? Perhaps she needs to raid the bar?

'More talk of lies, Kate? More mistrust?'

She has a thousand things to say. About her issues — commitment, abandonment, fears of opening up to him, anxieties about him knowing her too well, phobias about being hurt, second guessing his every intention—

'Well, Kate? I'm not gonna makeit easee for ya. I'm tired. Gotta backache and really wanna go ho—'

'Wait. Rick, just … wait. Please, I …'

She trails off, using her personality 'get out of jail free' card by looking away. Finding something to focus on instead of him. Until his gaze draws her back into the fold. She searches for the rehearsed words, but they stick in her throat like a munched-up rum truffle.

'So we jus' gonna sit here? Or you, stand? And lookit each other like we haven't had sex, or spent a nigh' doing somethin' speshul. 'Cause it is … Beckett … yanno? It's special … and I don't jus' do it with any—'

She kisses him. She kneels against the low table that holds the karaoke machine, finds the back of his head and presses her lips into his. It's meant to be apologetic, a tangible link to what she needs to say, a seal of sorry and sadness, but Castle doesn't hold back. Beckett wonders why she even thought he would. He doesn't. It's her. But not this time.

She kisses him. Again and again, as they rediscover the rhythm of their mouths, blanketing their minds to the last few hours, silencing the things they need to say to each other. It becomes a blatant suggestion of what's next, how much she wants him, any way he wants her. Castle pulls her against him. She finds his lap and sits side-saddle, kissing his neck, tracing his eye lobes with her fingers, letting him adjust her hips so she's firmly against him. Sideways, for a moment, then into a straddle.

'I'm sorry. For not trusting you, for being … you know? Irrational?'

'Overwrought,' he says, still pretending he's mad. 'I think you forgot that one.'

Kate grits her teeth. Why did she think this would be easy. 'I _am _sorry, and if I _seemed _overwrought—'

'Not _seemed_. You were ... and all the other stuff.' He kisses her and flips at the hem of her shirt with hot fingers.

'Okay,' she gets out between groans. 'I'm sorry. For being all those things. Castle?' She holds his head between two hands, wresting his mouth away from hers in order to get his full visual attention. 'I _am. Very. Sorry. _It's me. I have closeness things ... _issues.'_

'It's okay. I get it.'

In another case of crying mortification, Kate finds that her good eye is leaking tears and her patched one is damp beneath the obsolete dressing. It'll be off tomorrow, and it's itchy and needs tending. Kate smudges her hand against the flow of tears on her face and pulls the patch off her other eye.

'Hey? I forgive ya. No need to reopen old wounds.'

'It had to come off,' Kate says, smiling for the first time since those heady moments in her apartment. 'It feels good. I can see a lot clearer.'

'It looks spectacular.'

But she doesn't leave it open for long. As soon as he uses his mouth on her, both eyelids flicker closed. Castle kisses her cheekbones, the side of her mouth, capturing her lips in a candidly explicit exchange of his acceptance of her apology and his intent to take it further. When he asks her to come home with him, to visit the loft, some privacy and comfort, she asks him if that's what he wants.

'We can have hot, dirty make-up sex here. I know the owner. They say he's kinky.'

'Kinky, but really handsome, I've heard.' Castle leers, his own seated enthusiasm apparent beneath her straddle. 'Yes to the make-up sex, but it's not far to my place. If you drive, I promise to not touch you below the waist for the first mile and a half.'

Kate laughs against his lips, wondering if they have the chance for a quickie on the pool table. 'Oh, but I came in a cab.'

'Seems you will be doing the same on the return trip, then?'

'I, um, ... _oh_ ...'

'But I gotta tell you, Kate? I do want my make-up sex rough. Then I want it slow. Then I'll have it over coffee—'

'Don't push your luck, Castle,' she says, tugging at his collar, reaching beneath his belt and untucking the hem of shirt as he kisses her neck, her mouth, her nose.

'Let's go home, but you've gotta promise not to jump me in the cab,' he sighs into her hair.

Kate stands up, takes his hand and pulls his staggering form against her. He's familiar. He's doable and she wants him every which way till Sunday. Beyond Sunday.

'I promise not to touch you above the waist for the first mile and a half.'


	11. Chapter 11

_Only 3 chapters left of this one. The next 2 have original characters interacting with Beckett and Castle, and the one featured in this chapter has difficulty with the Englisehhhh language, hence the spelling!_

* * *

><p><strong>NOW:<strong>

Castle's a sap. He's easy, soft-centred, and as able to hold onto a grudge as he is to holding his tongue when a joke is to be had or a piece of trivia is to be told.

Way too easy where Beckett is concerned.

He might have made it more difficult for someone else, but after spending that first night in Beckett's bed and hours of rich, sensual, star-studded splendor in her company, Castle is not in the mood to make her beg for forgiveness. Besides, he's had a bit to drink. Though she sobers him up quickly — kissing the drunken stupor from his lips and replacing it with an intoxication all her own — he's not one to pout.

Unless it involves the loosening of his lips in a lax, sulky expression to make his mouth and tongue more accessible to hers. Then he might pout, but only for dual physical benefits.

So, they had a fight over the text joke and she threw him out? A fight's is a fight is a dent to his ego. He could have been surly and unresponsive for a while, made her fawn and prance about to bolster his confidence, but _really? _ When Kate Beckett is hot for him in the heat of the moment, he's gonna keep stoking that particular fire. He's happy to be her yeasty bun of goodness in an oven of smoking love …

Yeah, so that's a really weird thing to think, it gets muddled in his alcohol-licked brain and he's grateful he doesn't say it out loud.

Hey? He's not getting any younger. Time is of the essence, and when she promises not to touch him above the waist for the first mile and a half of their trip to the loft, he wants to ask the cabbie to get the fuck out of the car and come back in the morning.

Okay. He's not happy about her mistrusts issues, sure. But when she carouses her tongue between his lips and sits astride him with every intent to repeat their bathtub love-in from the night before, he learns to live with his unhappiness. He's disappointed she pushed him away, out of her home, at the first sign of a problem But when she asks about make-up sex in his bar (as opposed to the preferred _on_ his bar) and tells him that the owner is kinky, his disappointment grows an erection with her name on it.

And he gets over it with the speed of a Beckett-infused caffeine hit.

Yeah, he's wary of exactly how to progress in the aftermath of their first 'sexual relationship fight', but the instant Kate grinds her lower body into his lap and her lips beneath the collar of his shirt, he forgets about fighting _anything_. Especially his desire for her.

Especially _her_, his non-babied bun in an oven, or something as hot, risen, soft, crusty, home-baked and chewy as that!

They wander out of The Old Haunt, but as soon as they get into the street and amongst the populace, Kate drops his hand. She did have her arm around his waist as they meandered through the front door. By the time they're due to hail a cab, even the hand holding has been dispensed with … not that Castle notices. Not that he minds.

_Like hell!_

Just as she uses her best NYPD whistle to hail a cab, Castle backs his judgement, sizes up the distance between his hand and her well-slung jeans, and attempts to embrace her from behind. When she shrugs playfully out of this, he grabs at her hand. When she swats away this advance, Castle makes a determined move to snuggle Kate to his side, in a position boyfriends and galfriends adopt the world over — his arm flung casually around her shoulder, her arm wrapped around his waist.

But _na-ah_ she's not having it. Not that he minds.

_Yeah, right!_

Castle is suddenly as sober as a Sidney Perlmutter put down, what with the hit of night air and the realization that Beckett is more interested in a cab than holding him. He puts the confusion aside for the moment, telling himself that Kate is so excited about getting him into a cab and touching him below the waist that she's reserving her energy.

Until they sit in the back seat of the cab, Castle puts his arm around her shoulders again and she turns to him in the sleazy light of the interior and frowns.

'What?'

Castle feels his earlier sappiness deflate with the intensity of a cheese souffle just removed from the hot, yeasty bun oven.

'I was only joking about the touch-up in the cab, Castle,' Kate whispers, scooting him a smile, and placing a restraining hand on his knee. She withdraws that as quickly as the promises she'd made in The Old Haunt. Makes his head spin.

'Says the lady who was looking for some make-up sex in a bar?' Castle tries to pitch his voice at ticklish level, speaking as though he's in the midst of some banter with Beckett, but it's hard to hide the depth of his confusion. 'I wasn't going to hold you to the waist comment, Kate, but … ?'

The cabbie interrupts any discussion by turning on the main interior light. A harsh-looking face penetrates the space between the front seats, as Castle and Beckett are joined by an angry-voiced third party. This guy must want to get into the early relationship issue action, he's got his nose so far into their sitting space.

'Where you two go?' the cabbie asks, looking over his passengers with undisguised disdain. 'You go-in to sit or night? Lookit each ovver over? Give address! Give _now!_'

Castle squints and adds the cab driver's face to memory, dissecting his accent and demeanor for a future character in one of his pieces of fiction. He hears Kate give the details about the loft. He wonders if she intends to continue to confuse him there, or if she's going to return to some semblance of tactile goodness behind closed doors.

The cabbie turns back to his job with a cluck of his tongue, while Kate has the courtesy to explain what the hell she's doing with the swatting and shrugging.

'Just because I suggested it in The Old Haunt, doesn't mean I'm into public displays of affection, Castle,' she says, resting back into the seat, much less standoffish than she'd been when they'd first hit the busy street. 'It was only us in the bar, right? It's not … it's not even _you_ … so much … it's … '

'Oh, please don't say _'it's me'_, Beckett.' Castle laughs, sounding more relaxed and confident than he feels. 'Something less cliched?'

She covers his hand with hers. Evidently this manner of touching in the back of a darkened cab doesn't amount to a public display of affection? 'Not everyone is a best-selling novelist. I was going for the cliche to help explain—'

'And now you're touching my thigh, Detective? Be careful that you don't dissolve into a puddle of water and seep into the seat for doing something so out of character.'

It exits his mouth tinged with the faintest trace of bitterness. Castle doesn't mean for it to bite the air between them, but it does. It can't be retracted. She's aware of it too, because her hand is removed with his false bravado.

'Yeah, and there's no need to be sarcastic either,' she says, withdrawing her gaze to look out the opposite window. 'Just because I'm not into public stuff, doesn't mean you have to take it so personally.'

'I'm not,' he says, squashing the urge to apologize for performing an illegal PDA on the streets of NYC. If he has to accept this fact about her, then Castle isn't going to say sorry for wanting to be demonstrative. At all times. With her. He'd jump her on the subway during rush hour if he could.

'You're not taking it personally? Then why have you shuffled over to the other corner?'

He _had? _ Must have been a self-conscious thing. 'I was afraid our thighs might brush against each other while we took a corner at high speed. Now _that_ would be going too far. In public.'

She scoffs. 'Now you're being ridiculous.'

Castle feels the bottom of his stomach drop to the point where the alcohol mixes with his most ardent sexual urges and creates a drunken downer. So much for being touched below the waist! The bickering leaves him wanting another drink, if only to do something constructive with his hands during this proclaimed 'no touching period.'

He hates it.

'How I'm I being ridiculous? I'm just following your lead?'

'You're taking it to extremes, Castle. Sitting in the opposite corner is not what I meant when I said—'

'What _do_ you mean then? I'm confused.'

'How is it confusing? I'm not into public displays of—'

'I know. I _know_! So, holding hands on a dark street? _No. _ Hugging you when I want to be close to you is okay, but not when there's anyone else around? Um, stripping in a bar is fine, as long as it's only us when you do it—'

'I _never _stripped in a bar …'

'Getting into your underwear in The Old Haunt is great, as long as it's closed and you have an eye patch on? Um, what else? Undressing me with your eyes in a crowd is wonderful, but I am never, _ever_ able to kiss you hello in front of them …?'

'I've never undressed you with my eyes!'

'You've been doing it for three years, Kate. Unlike the other men in your life, I'm not allowed to touch you at work …'

'_Castle!'_

'And embracing a guy you're sleeping with in The Precinct is fine, as long as he has a motorbike, is tall and can square the crap out his his uber-shoulders?'

By the time he's through, Kate is so close to him that he's shoved into the corner, holding his hands like cat paws in order to prove how annoying he's finding her damned rules. They're ludicrous. As ludicrous as his current display of trying not to touch her so his hands are upward and splayed.

'Keep clear, Kate. If I sneeze in this position, I'm liable to perform a public display of gropeage. I might even stroke your breast with my fingernail.'

'I'll give you gropeage,' she says, watching his mouth, making it so hard for him to ignore the fact that if he moved merely inches, his PDA would turn into a full-blown oral graphic novel — with emphasis on the graphic element of lip onslaught.

'And I've never embraced a boyfriend at work, Castle. You're thinking of something else.'

Castle stops watching her watch his mouth, focuses on a nondescript point above her hair and flexes his jaw. 'You put your arm round Dr Motorcycle boy-man. You kissed that other cop — um, what was his name again — um … _Deming?_ Yeah, and don't get me started with the things you and Sorenson were doing against the door frame in the—'

'All when I thought we were alone! You're missing the point, I don't make a habit of it and I don't feel comfortable—'

'I like public displays of affection, Beckett. I might want to hold your hand when we—'

'Well, I don't.'

'If I want to, then I'll try to, you can be sure—'

'Then we have a problem. Don't we? Because if you think you can—'

_'STOP. STOPIT NAO!'_

As Castle prepares his mouth for another round of verbal Wimbledon, the entire front area of the cab erupts with the yelled command, followed by a string of what can only be described as pigeon English obscenities. The cab stops in a swerve-to-the-curb movement of abrupt steering and braking.

'Ay, ay, ay,' says the cab driver, positioning himself into the middle of the front seats, switching the interior light on again and peering back at the passengers. Castle prepares to get Kate out of the cab, but before he can do it, he feels her rummaging about in the area near their waists, causing the BIGGEST public display of affection while (possibly) searching for her weapon.

Not that she should be packing tonight. But he is — it feels like a 9mm — and he's sure she can feel it.

Castle doesn't mention it. He knows it's instinctual for Beckett to grope for a pistol (or perhaps something else that discharges) so he decides to enjoy the deliciousness of her fingers near his lower abdomen while he can. Before she realizes he's loving it way too much and that they've got company.

_God. Yeah, a little bit lower ..._

'You two ridic-las!' says their cabbie, entirely oblivious to the fact that one of his passengers is trying to leave the vehicle, while the other is searching for her gun. 'You! Lady! You be too 'gressive to rich man. You want bone him? I seeit! You do. Okay. Boning okay. But not okay here. You bone home.'

_'What?'_

Castle doesn't know whether to laugh at the look of complete horror on Beckett's face about being accused of the most disgraceful form of public affection, or to bring this interaction to a quick halt. They should think about leaving. This guy is crazy-assed, but something about what he's saying to Kate is worthy of the crack Heat/Rook novel forming in his mind. Followed by groping and sex.

'You high-sex. Want it. You jammin' rich boy up in corner of cab. No do. Too 'gressive. He say NO! You not get what means? _NO!_ You leave him. No boning. He say 'no!'

Castle uses the hand that's not trapped between their bodies to reach back for the door handle, all the while noting Kate's expression, the feel of her hand near his own prepped weapon, and the outrage of their maniac man driver. _Kurt. _ He expects the catch of the door to be child-proof locked, broken in some way, just like the best murder-mystery fiction. He's surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed, that it's not. They can egress anytime they want.

'Wait,' says Beckett, wending her trapped hand a little lower, making Castle stop his exiting idea and his regular breathing at the same time. He could be pissed that Kate seems to be a fan of this type of public display of affection with Kurt the Crazy, but the feel of her hand against the top ridge of his underwear is like the most soothing balm to a cock on fire. Jesus! Finally! A little bit of action below the waist in a cab …

'You get out. Both peeps. You touchy-feely. You know he not want boning. He say _NO!_ and his hands? Like cat's. Trying to keep you 'way.' But. You keep pressing. You … you … you … lewdish. You are—'

'I'm not doing anything with him. Or to him,' she starts, pushing her hand just that little bit lower so it coasts against the crank of his fly. There's no way Crazy Kurt can see what's happening down below, and Castle almost gets off on the knowledge that this is a public display of erection … um … _affection_ under stealth conditions.

So damn hot.

'No true, lady. You lie, as well as dirty gal wit rich man-boy. He say _NO!_ but you alway want. You take. Take, take, take, take. Well no' in dis cab. You get out. Both you! Boning, both. AND NOW YOU LAUGH? Bout this? Not fun. Not 'all. Boning not funneh or laughing like ...'

Castle does. He can't help himself, and instead of giggling out the crisp laughter bubbles he imagines are going to froth forth, his mirth is expressed as an earthy, low-thudding 'ha-ha.' It must tickle something in No-PDA Beckett, as the next thing Castle hears is the contagious sound of her laughter.

She lectures through her gasping giggles. 'It's not like there's indecent exposure or anything even close to that—'

'Oh. But will. You mark words! First, pressing. Then, lewdish press. Then, lady? What then? Bone him, and 'sposure. You not do in cab. I call plice. I call 'em. They say 'NO' to bone in cab, too. Cops. I get 'em. They 'rest you, lady! Take you to be bitch in the jails. Zing-zing. Some lade's bitch soon. You.'

As Castle is about to explode from the frontal lewdish press that Crazy Kurt can't possibly see — surely he's referring to Kate pressing into him before, when she was proving her point? — she goes for her badge. She's into her purse before he can stop her or ask for more pre-boning behaviour. Instead, Castle releases the door behind them and they spill onto the street. He has enough strength and sober ability to hold them both up as they step into the curb, and Kate withdraws her purse as she follows Castle out.

'Good. Rid-ance boning at home. You do it. Not good sanitation here. Not good for pubics to see everything, even lady bits. On display. Disgust!'

Beckett pushes back towards the open door of the cab, wanting to make her point about her badge, her anti-PDA stance, her _everything_. Castle nestles her to him, laughing into her hair, pulling her gently in the opposite direction to the nut-case knight-rider in the cab. 'Let's go. Kate, come on. It's a short walk now—'

There are people passing them in the street, it's all quite public for this time of night, and even though Beckett is amused and lighthearted, she's Kate-determined to have the last word. Swatting Castle's hands away is part of the statement she wants to make, it seems.

'I'll have you know …' She laughs and ducks her head back towards Kurt the Crazy, 'that I don't even _do_ public displays of affection let alone bone someone in the back of a—'

'Lady? Shuddup. Jus' shuddup lewdish mouf or I call cops to—'

But Kurt the Crazy can't be heard over the throaty chuckles of Castle as he pulls against Beckett's arm to herd her away from an attempt to tell everyone that _'I AM a cop, jackass!' _ She yells it loudly enough so that Kurt the Crazy roars his machine off in a hurry, and they gain a couple of curious looks from a group of people streaming past them.

'Hey? Castle, I hadn't finished with that—'

But Castle has finished. With _that_. He silences her words, captures her long, lean body against his own and, in the middle of a thoroughfare, crashes a kiss into her lips.

* * *

><p>Beckett doesn't know whether to be annoyed that Castle does <em>everything<em> in his power to ignore her anti-PDA stance on the walk back to his loft, or be highly flattered by it. She can sense that he's proving a point. She can also sense he's not that happy with her.

She shakes off his arm. He uses his bulk to grab at her hand and hold it against his thigh. She employs fingernails to scratch at his palm, he buffers her entire forearm against his own, and works that sexual epicentre she's got happening near her wrist. She gasps and wriggles, feigning a near slap to his face which ends up as a soft love touch.

He growls, and she's so turned on, she almost rejects her non-public display of sexuality and acts on instinct alone. Instead, she jogs ahead, finds the front of the loft apartment complex and stops when she realizes she can't break in past the detail. Castle catches up, finds a nook in the building — still outside, still public enough — and presses his body against hers so she's flush against the cool, hard, hard coolness of brick.

There's a doorman. He's checking them out, Beckett is sure of it.

'Look.' She's a little breathless from the play. He kisses the downward slope of her neck, nipping, lipping. She's a lot breathless. 'Hey! I know we disagree about this, Castle, but can't we work around it?'

'No.'

He's still that little bit put out. Despite Kate's best effort to ignore the gruff approach, she finds it kinda—

'If I want to hold your hand, I'm going to. If I want to kiss you goodbye in front of colleagues, I'll do that too. If you keep resisting it, Beckett, I'll give you up to Kurt the Crazy. He can talk to you about boning.'

_Quirky? Forceful?_

'And if I want to …' he finds the bottom of her red top, dips fingers inside and starts stroking her skin, playing with the waistband of her jeans. 'If I want to touch you in a public place … then … you better watch out.'

_Erotic? Okay, maybe._

Castle's voice is husky. She wishes it wasn't, wishes he would pout like a little boy and make sullen demands, but he's stating and heating her body faster than she can see. Even with both eyes operational. It's amazing doing this type of thing with Castle now that she has her binocular vision back. It makes fluttering both eyes closed that bit more sexy.

He kisses her like her mouth is on fire and he can provide the whoosh of water to douse the inferno, but all it does is bolster a need in her that's so smutty, she wants horizontal and naked and his hands all over her. Anywhere she's not clothed. Anytime she's not coming.

He breaks off the kiss suddenly, and even though Kate tries desperately not to moan with need for reconnection, she does. Her lips even follow his as he draws his head back to look into her eyes.

'What?' She hears her own voice say, although she wishes it would shut the fuck up. 'Keep … kissing. Me.'

Castle doesn't; he moves inward, low-ward, straining towards her ear in a mixture of 'never, ever call me kitten' mode and a man confident that he's already in her bed and her freaking _life._

'And if you ever, _ever_ swat at my arms, turn away from my mouth again, Beckett, you know what'll happen, don't you?'

'Um …?' She can't help herself. She wants those lips under hers. Now. She wants him over her, inside her, moving to grind away at the Castle-lust that's somewhere … up there. Somewhere only he can get to, it seems, and she forgets all about her public phobia of affection expression …

_Or whatevs that is._

She moves forward, tries to kiss the crap outta him. He weaves, open his eyes in humour, waggle his eyebrows. 'Come now, Detective, I'm not through here. And don't try to kiss me in a public place. You need to work harder to get back in my good books, I'm not that easy. I'm no sap.'

'Oh really?' she says, attempting to wrestle back some of the upper hand, using her partially-restored intellect to try and hasten their movement upstairs. 'Listen, Castle? I'm sorry that I'm not as … as … over the top in public as you. Can we please try to work around it?'

'No.'

She grins. He wipes that off her face by frisking hands upward, over the back of her ribs so that his thumbs wrap around her and tamper with the under-strains of her bra. He uses the shock attack to jack his knee between her legs. Again, Kate tries to stop her body responding, but her own knees fold slightly so she's against the top of his thigh and finding some pressure in all the right spots.

She might prop here for a week and be relatively happy.

'I tell you what, Castle,' she says, gently moving the crux of her jeans against his thigh, moving her own head so that she's breathing, hot and penetrating, into his ear. 'If you tone it down in public, I can show you just how willing I am to perfect my private — very, _very_ private — displays of affection when the opportunity presents itself. K?'

She hears him gulp. It's tiny, but it cements a small _whoop-de-do_ celebration in her mind. Kate doesn't need to be a detective to know that he's working hard to make her 'pay', but a dead giveaway that he's struggling is the cocky jaunt to his knee. It's still well and truly between her thighs, jammed into a place she so needs it to be, but there's less determination there. A slight wobble. A quick step away and, thank-you-very-much, but Kate's up and into his loft in the moment it takes to mourn the loss of the pressure he provided with his upper leg.

She lets it unravel as soon as her back hits the inside of his front door. Kate thinks she pulls him against her, thinks she might yank him so hard that they end up on the floor right near the door, but then it could be him. There's such a muffled array of words, she doesn't know whether she's coming or going, Arthur or Martha (who thankfully, is well out of town, as is Alexis) until she's out of her jeans and straining in his arms to be touched and done. Undone, touched, all of the above.

They can't find their rhythm against the door, so they slip down, or did she pull him. Whatever, the floor nearby is scattered with chat, laughter and mayhem:

'Why are your jeans so tight?'

'They fit okay. Just get 'em off.'

'You always look hot in them—'

'I'd rather be out. Of them. Now, for God's sake …'

They leave denim and her red top somewhere between the front door mat and the couch. He's still fully dressed until she rolls on top of him and rips his shirt. Right down. Ripped to shreds, then she brandishes her teeth over the buff of his chest the trail of happy hair …

'Why do you still have pants on? Castle? God, don't kiss me there! Not yet. I won't last if you do that already—'

'Is it too public, Beckett? Or is that _pubic?_ Oh, I like your underwear. Did you wear it for make-up sex?'

'Yes. _No._ I don't know, but … Not there! Get out of those pants.'

'I wanna be clothed. Just for now. And you? Not clothed.'

It happens. Somewhere around the bottom of the couch, he manhandles her out of all supportive items, batters her hands away from his own pants and ripped shirt and leans back against the base of his furniture. He turns her round, she's trapped between his knees, and his expert writer hands work all the magic they can without typing a single, solitary word.

_Oh._

Maybe one.

_God._

And there's the second, slipping out as Kate collects her thoughts and tries to zone back into a reality after she's been turned inside out by fingers that tease and press and slide. Instead of lying limply in his arms, resting her spine against his chest, she pivots, pulls, and creates a wave of recline and nudity in the space of the next couple of minutes.

Time doesn't matter. When Castle climbs onto the couch, over her, she's ready to take everything he's willing to give. It's only when he kisses her, sinks hot and heavy against her with the extent of his body, that Kate realizes she wants to give back. She does, and not only privately. Not only by sexual means, although she's a total sucker for this part of proceedings and might always be … as she comes for a second time via sheer internal compatibility. How they do this each time is beyond her comprehension, as she sails through her own little-death spasms and enjoys the guttural throes of his. No manual stimulation required in this situation …

She'll think about orgasms later, maybe. Perhaps Castle will start a conversation about them, given his interest in varied subjects, and she wouldn't put it past him to bring up the topic at work. He might even do it to prove a point. Damn him and his embrace of all things public.

'I'm sorry,' she utters, before she can stop herself. He's brushing back her hair, kissing her wherever he can see bare skin, holding her like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps there's not and that's why she's talking now? 'Yeah, I've been … um … what was the word? Irrational about the texts. About the public displays of affection tonight. I've been …'

'Overwrought?' he suggests, his mouth quirking heavily to one side.

Kate bristles. 'No, Castle, but I might admit to being—'

'Just overwrought. It's the right word.'

She sighs, snuggling further beneath him, wondering when they'll eat. Shower. Both. 'This is always going to happen, isn't it? We're gonna butt heads forever.'

He chortles, and it's so low in his chest, so masculine, she wants him again. More And he's there. They both are, and it's scary and wonderful in the same bated breath.

'Possibly. Yeah, okay. We will fight. But hey? We've always got The Old Haunt. The pool table. The karaoke machine. It helps.'

Castle kisses her. It's deep-seated, tongue-on-teeth, a suggestion what will be happening to lower bodies really soon. He lets her draw some air, but only for a second while he moves down to ping his lips against her throat, her clavicle, the top of her breasts.

'I thought you might have said that we'll always … always have each … other?'

Kate arches up against his more southerly loving, unable to believe she has uttered such a lusted-up, tweenie-girl, shippy thought. But she has, and she thinks she hears Castle gasp with shock at this sentiment — the closest either of them have come to verbalizing their feelings.

_I love you._

'Oh, Beckett? That's nice,' he jokes against the sternum side of her breast. 'But I much prefer having The Old Haunt.'

She's still laughing when he asks her to come to bed. Then, for a while, she's not.


	12. Chapter 12

**Now:**

Their second night together is so blissful, Castle feels as though he's been whipped in candy floss, sizzled round the sexiest theme-park in France, and floated back along the Seine while being suckled, french kissed, devoured.

He has gorged. He's as light as a pink sugared feather, as satiated as a wildebeest on a pride-of-lions diet, as in love as he's ever been in his life ...

Not that he's admitted it in so many words. Either has she, although he's _sure_ he heard something about love when he'd hoisted her onto the kitchen counter, crammed his body between her knees and fed her berry-covered waffles.

Beckett is easy to feed. She's not as gutturally responsive to food as her old friend Maddy — what with her groans of edible gratitude within a restaurant setting — but Kate's more instinctual. Responsive to visceral sensation. Starving when she's hungry, purring when she's satisfied. Punching her lips together with the pleasure of taste and raw _yum._ She saves her moans for sexual mischief, although she punctuates their eating with a skillet of kissing, a pan of touching, and a waffle load of smiling.

And for this, Richard Castle thanks the foodie gods of love, sex and sweet-savory brunch.

It's her grin that's almost killing him this morning. He offers to escort her to the ophthalmologist. When she agrees on the condition that she can drive the Ferrari downtown, Castle orders a cab. He expects a verbal mouthful — as opposed to the explicitly carnal, sensational mouthfuls he's experienced in the past twelve hours. Instead, she tosses him a cheeky smile, a tilt of the head and a Beckett pull on his t-shirt so they're as close as they can possibly be, fully dressed.

'So? As soon as I get the all clear _today_ from the doc, we launch the Ferrari, right? Driving to the wedding, remember?'

Castle knows it's kinkily wrong to find an aggressive, determined Beckett to be the hottest thing since a freaking inferno on the planet Mercury, but he does. The smiling, sexily-happy Beckett is something else. She's graphically flirty, can be downright dirty, and every single time she flashes a pearler his way, Castle has to pinch himself to make sure he's not hallucinating.

'_If_ you get the all clear today, you may drive to the wedding with both eyes open,' he says, placing his hands against her lower back and dragging her upward for a kiss. _Just because he can … and dear God, but she's smiling beneath his lips, so he pulls up for air_. 'But … upon recollection, you didn't win the bet at The Old Haunt entitling you to drive. Do you even remember that, Detective Beckett?'

Her hands are beneath his t-shirt, her flattened palms working the skin of his back, clever fingers playing the keyboard of his spine. He waits for the inevitable — when she uses the loosened elastic of his pyjama bottoms to lever her palms further downward in a journey of pinching, stroking … cupping. It's a standing position that's been so commonly adopted over the last little while, Castle wants to finance it to be set in bronze.

A statue … or a _mount._ In their honour.

'Was that bet made before or after you nearly blinded me with a cue stick, Castle?' she mouths in his ear, in time with an assault on his PJ bottoms. Her hands? He wonders if he'll ever get tired of them doing what hands do, like pinching, stroking, touching?

'I can't remember,' he whispers in her ear, wondering if he should remind her of the time it will take to get to her specialist, or continue to prove the pundits wrong — that testosterone levels don't dip after forty, and that man is capable of acting stiffly and deftly even if he's getting long in the tooth. Longer in the length?

_Besides, Beckett's only in her thirties. Women have vast, wanton needs round this age and it would be neglectful of him not to provide that._

It's his duty. Some men become special agents and fulfill important requirements with homeland security. Other guys drive ambulances, pilot jets, perform open-heart surgery, but he, Richard Castle? It's his duty to service the most important member of the NYPD. If she's happy, then crimes will solve themselves, murder will decline and pots of pure gold will be found at the end of every rainbow.

'We should go if we want to make the doctor on time,' he says, all the while letting himself get pushed backward towards his unmade bed. He estimates there's about five steps left before the back of his knees hit the mattress, giving him about two seconds to work out a way to pivot her around and flip her over like an upended turtle. It's romantic, right, thinking about Beckett in these terms? She has his thoughts all over the place ever since she's come out of her shell.

'We have time.'

They don't, but apparently they do, as she lets him reverse the pushing process and he's lying on top of her before he has the chance to talk about the traffic at this time of day.

'What are you going to say when the doctor asks you why your eye's uncovered?' he asks her, as she pulls his t-shirt up and over his head.

'The truth,' she says, in between kisses. To his chin, his chest, a carnivorous one to his nipple. 'That a pirate pulled it off.'

'Oh, very nice, Beckett!' he huffs out, guiding her head back to his level, tucking her underneath him so they fit together as surely as a piece of Lego and its regulation play mat. He ponders whether he's the Lego piece or the mat, but she pulls down his pyjama pants from the back and his mind is blocked.

'I'll tell him the patch was pulled off by the same pirate who stabbed me in the eye in the first place.'

_How is it that she's speaking so fluently, so assertively, when he's finding it hard to breathe?_ She must be distracted by the talk of pirate and patches, so Castle elects to rumble between their bodies, use the mattress to his advantage, and jack her up so he can fumble with the buttons of the top she's wearing.

It's his. If Castle wasn't so overjoyed that Kate Beckett is in his loft, smiling and being saucy and sexy, he'd be throwing a party about the fact that's she's wearing a blue, designer pyjama top of his, with underwear beneath, just so she could be modest while being hand-fed berry covered waffles on the kitchen counter. He's so in love with his life right now, it's ridiculous.

'Is this pirate a buccaneer, pray tell?' he whispers, low and suggestively in her ear, loving that the front of his pyjama top is now undone, and his hands have access to all areas. He hasn't lost count of the number of times they've made love, but if their first time was an awkward, fairly quick rumba in her bathtub after she'd been crying into her bubbles, then each subsequent interlude has been measured by learning, increased intimacy, precision worthy of extended experience.

Castle has been infatuation with anything Kate Beckett for a long time. Now that she's finally letting down her some defenses, he's going ensure he tries to solve every question there is about her. Even if it's by addressing their differences over public displays of affection, or her need to be bossy at work, or her fierce determination to flip him over so he's on his back.

He doesn't let her. Not this time, and the tactile struggle, the breezy push-pull of effort, and all the squirmy movements result in the most electrifying foreplay and erogenous tweaking.

'Move, Castle. I want to move.'

'You can move, all you want down there. But you need to tell me more about this buccaneer. Now … he wouldn't let you move.'

'I could shove that buccaneer on his ass,' she says, suddenly content to lie quietly and kiss. She touches him gently and seems willing to let him pilot his ship from top position despite her words. _Or so he thinks ..._

'Of course you could, Kate,' he says, in a slightly patronizing tone. 'You could kick any pirate on his—'

Her fingers lock on one ear, her tongue delves into the other, while her hand wiggles just low enough so that he's distracted by the chance that he's going to get hurt in the part that, moments ago, was about to get lucky. Grabbing at his rudder is not part of pirate play!

And in a flash, the man on a missionary above, is broken and entered from below. Um, or something equally as dirty-sounding as that.

Not that Castle cares too much. When Beckett, straddles him, bends her head and sucks along the line of his neck down his chest, he's happy enough to be the pirate who has had his wooden limb stolen by the deck monkey and now has no leg to stand on.

'You were saying, _Rick?'_

His name works its way around her palate and is spoken on a risen sigh. She's not as unaffected as she was before, and the glaze of both her eyes is enough to have Castle crossing his vision, and his fingers, in the mad hope that he will always be able to make her look this way.

Flushed. Worked up, so aroused, he feels as though she might break him.

'What were you saying? About me not being able to kick that buccaneer in his …'

When Castle sits up, uses his bulk to change everything angled and inward in a slick, incisive move, Kate can't even mutter the final word. His mouth is at the side of her face, into her hair, his tongue fiddling with her ear, and he grins to himself with the sheer pleasure of being able to render her speechless. Her lips are apart. Her legs fall either side of his hips. Her hair is messed, her skull lolls back and eyes shutter closed as though there's nothing more important to her than to gasp at what she's seeing behind those lids. What she's feeling inside those seconds of spasm and release.

Eventually.

Castle finally lets up. He's sweaty and sure, as though he's conquered another part of the hidden treasure, and he wishes his name was Roger. He could go on and on to Beckett about how Jolly his Roger is today.

'And that, Katherine Beckett, is what we know in our seafaring world as successfully walking the plank.'

She laughs.

'And what a hard length of wood it is! _Yes_?'

She laughs again, and the noise conks through her nose straight into his chest like the sweetest scent on offer.

The pirate theme continues all the way to the ophthalmologist, and the contagious nature of her happiness is enough to keep Castle on top of the world for at least a two-hour period of no-touching.

Though he sneaks a quick kiss in the back of a cab.

* * *

><p>She half expects to have another lunatic cab driver. Kate wouldn't be surprised to see the manic expression of crazy Kurt coming at them from the front of the taxi as they travel downtown towards her eye specialist appointment.<p>

The fact they have an efficient, friendly female only adds sunshine to an already vibrant day. Kate allows her thoughts to linger long enough on what she's actually feeling, and although she'd like to deny it, she doubts she's ever been this upbeat in her life.

If she could form an _'ewww'_ with her lips, she would, but the truth is she'd much rather be crashing them against Castle's reddened pair of lushness. It's a fact! He's been using his lips so much over the last few days, it looks like Castle has dabbled in one of her lipsticks and is now Rick the Red.

'You been using my lipstick?' she says, before she can stop herself muttering into his ear. 'Your mouth looks red. _Shiny_.'

'There's a very good, very satisfying reason …'

Castle darts her a look. A crooked smile and a quirk of his eyebrow is all it seems to take these days to make her restless with need. She cannot stop looking at his mouth, and he laps it up by puckering his lips in kissing mimicry.

'Imagine what Dr I Amcat will say when he sees my lips? He'll check out my puss, just like you're doing.'

'What? Just no, Castle.'

'What do you mean?'

'You don't need to use the word 'puss' when you meet Dr Amcat. It's not … that … it's not such a great word to use.'

'Beckett?' Castle starts, swinging an arm around her shoulders and pressing into her side. Kate doesn't move despite her convictions the previous night. 'A simple look into Irish history will tell you that the word _'puss'_ is equivalent to 'mouth'. And it's all a funny word pun, given that your ophthalmologist's name is Amcat and that puss is feline _and _relates to—'

'Here's your stop, folks,' says their cabdriver, negating Kate's need to press her fingers to his puss to shut him up.

He steals a kiss in the back of the cab, just before they alight. It reminds her of his words from the night before, about never swatting his hand away, never turning her head from his kiss in a public forum. The fact she doesn't — granted, she's not given much forewarning — plays on her mind as they locate the rooms of the ophthalmologist she'd (not) seen in the hospital.

The eminent Dr I Amcat.

Castle makes so many cracks about Dr I Amcat that by the time Kate and he are riding the elevator up to the ninth floor —_ 'ooooh, nine lives, Beckett. Dr I Amcat has nine lives'_ — she's about to make a fist and hit him in his reddened puss. Luckily, the elevator doors open and they're surrounded by Opthalmology Suite 101. There are pictures of eyes, models of corrective lenses, diagrams of the new technology relating to visual research.

Kate doesn't need to look at Castle to know that his eyes are agog and his mind is twinkling with interesting, trivia-related visions about the open consulting room space.

'Kate Beckett to see Dr Amcat,' she says to the receptionist, ignoring Castle as he finds a pitched-for-kids, foam eyeball and starts spinning it on his fingertip like a basketball. He's oblivious to Liz, the receptionist, and her stare-of-death pointing in his direction. Castle only has eyes for his basketball orb.

'What is he doing?' asks Liz, her nose twitching in annoyance at the mature man unsettling the pile of expensive, appropriate children's toys.

'He, um, touches things.'

The receptionist stiffens. She's unable to hide her agitation at Castle, but is flustered enough to address Kate. 'Ian Amcat is unwell and on extended leave. Um, you saw him during your recent hospital stay, I see?' When Kate nods, Liz continues with one angry eye on Castle, now jiggling the foam eyeball from hand-to-hand in a shout out to a weird form of eyeball sports. 'You'll have to see his colleague, Ms Beckett. It's Dr Furnace. She'll be with you shortly. If you'll have a seat? And sir? Put the eyeball _down!'_

Kate tries to hide her grin when Castle responds with his typical look of surprise, but he has evidently been listening attentively. 'No Dr I Amcat today? What's wrong with him? I hope he's not _feline_ too badly and—'

'_Castle!_'

Liz is about to erupt. Her detective instincts on fire, Kate takes the dispensed-with foam eyeball from the reception counter, gives it back to Castle with a nod of her head to where he needs to put it away. Castle takes the toy, shoots her a lascivious grin and cocks his head at Liz. 'We're seeing Dr Furnace? I wonder if she's hot ..'

Just as Liz looks like she's about to direct a receptionist rant at Rick, a well-dressed woman appears from a nearby door. She's tall, ebony-haired, assertive and eye-catching.

'Kate Beckett?' she notes, looking down at the file, and then out past the reception area into a well-appointed waiting room. 'Appears like the gentleman scheduled before you has cancelled, so, guess what?'

Dr Furnace gives Kate a smile so warm, she finds herself heated by Castle on one side, the ophthalmologist on the other. But it's her foam eyeball friend that answers the rhetorical question. 'That gentleman lost sight of the time?'

The doctor glances from Kate to Rick and smiles wryly. 'I could make you guess again, um … friend of Ms Beckett, but I'm afraid we need to get started.'

She walks ahead of them, down the beautifully minimalist hallway and into the specialist area of the office. It's dimly lit. As the doctor takes a seat at her desk and encourages Kate to sit beside her, she flaps her hand to an empty chair near the door where Castle is expected to go.

'I'm Iris, by the way. Welcome, Kate. May I call you Kate?'

There's something about Iris that's very familiar, she thinks as she spots Castle in the eye-chart mirror mouthing _"Iris Furnace"?_ and grinning as though he's won the character-naming lottery. She can imagine him saying 'who the hell names an ophthalmologist Iris Furnace, when (a) she _is_ hot, (b) she's an eye doctor and _hel-lo, IRIS!_ And (c) there's too many 's' sounds in that name?'

He stays quiet, but Kate knows that he's dying to say something. Somewhere, a voice taps at her head, screaming at her about knowing him far too well. She ignores that too and answers Iris.

'Kate's fine. This is Rick.'

Beckett watches with amusement as Iris Furnace merely nods in Castle's direction, as though she's oblivious to the fun he's having with her name. She seems very focused, almost one-eyed in her manner of examination and appraisal — _oh, and now she's making ridiculous puns,_ Kate chastises herself as Iris lines up her ophthalmoscope for a viewing of the injured site.

There's no delicate way to get the eye examined. Kate learned this in the hospital when one of the consultant ophthalmologists had gotten so close to her with the scope, she felt as though he was angling for a kiss. It's no different with Iris Furnace. She might smell nicer than a registrar who has been on shift for twelve hours, but she's close enough for Kate to hear the bolt of her pulse.

'So, Kate? You took a pool cue to the eye, right? Must have affected your game?'

If there's anything more uncomfortable than having Dr Furnace speaking into her open mouth, it's that Iris is taking so much time looking into her good eye. Kate doesn't want to breathe in case the doctor is affected by the fumes of her recently ingested coffee. Iris asks her to look this way and that. To focus on the pinpoint light. To gaze into the corner of the room.

She spots Castle in the field of the mirror again and a breezy laugh escapes into Iris's face. Dr Furnace reacts with a smile, withdraws the scope and sits back for a moment.

'I take it your game was ruined after that particular incident? You know, Kate? You have incredible eyes.'

Kate waits for Iris Furnace to add '… for someone who has had a recent injury' or 'for a woman over thirty' or even 'because you have something special happening to the retina …' but it doesn't happen. The 'incredible eyes' comment is left there and the doctor directs her attention to the injured side.

'Yes. Really big eyes, huge dilation and exquisite colouring.'

'All the better to see you with, my dear.'

Castle's comment breaks the tension for Kate. She hears herself chuckle, and a small rumble from his spot in the room as he appreciates his own cleverness. Iris Furnace continues on as if Rick Castle isn't even around or worth the air in her practice.

'Do you play pool often, Kate?' she asks, drawing out the syllables, moving closer still to Kate's face and pivoting around with her scope. 'I bet you're good at it.'

'No. No, I'm not that good.'

Iris chuckles and it's soft, light and whispered so low, Beckett is sure that Castle can't hear it. 'I'm sure you're great at _everything_, Kate.'

Oh-kay, so Iris has a furnace that's nowhere near her eye. Kate decides it might be time to set the record straight, that she's here for a professional consult, not to be hit on by an attractive doctor with a scope in her hand. But she's so damn closetoherface. _So_ close. Any way Kate turns, any word she utters, is absorbed straight into the doctor's aura, and horrifically? Kate's suddenly developed a tickle to her throat that's making her want to cough due to the irritation of her uvula.

She suppresses the cough reflex, but moves forward in her restraint and bunts so, so close to Iris Furnace. It's one of those awkward, 'I wish I had just coughed' moments.

'So, Iris?' says Castle, from somewhere beyond the furnace of eye doctor face-on-face. 'What are ophthalmologist students called in med school? Um, are they _pupils_? Do they lens each other their notes? Are their dorms usually like pig styes?'

Castle is so noisy in the background, Iris has little choice but to acknowledge his presence. Kate hears a tiny moan of annoyance escape the doctor's lips — she could hear her breakfast wander down her esophagus she's so freakishly close — and Dr Furnace is forced to move back from her examination at the sound of a clatter from near his seat. He's spun a model eyeball around on one of her desks and it topples over, drawing Iris to stare in his direction. Kate is part-flummoxed and-part relieved. At least she has some breathing space.

'Oops, sorry Iris. I think I knocked your model and put it into a glau-coma.'

As Iris mutters something about the need for care in her consulting rooms and starts to speak to Kate about the excellent recuperation of her eye, Castle throws her a look of bemusement. Beckett might have rolled her eyes at his corny jokes, his need to be part of the Iris hit-on, but she so pleased to have her personal space back, she simply smiles. Seems like she's been doing _that_ a lot, and she wonders if it suits her.

'I can see you're very happy about the prognosis, Kate?' says Dr Furnace, dipping closer again, but without the excuse of her scope. 'You have any further questions.'

_Like what about a date?_

It's in Kate's head, but she wonders if it's on the tip of Castle's tongue, on the cusp of Iris's mind. She must be one sexy NYPD cop at the minute, because she's knocking the eye patches off a couple of admirers. And loving it. All this smiling must be very damn becoming.

'Am I okay to drive?' Kate asks.

'Absolutely. Going someplace special?' asks the doctor, a little less intrusively.

'Um, sure. A wedding. Gotta be at a wedding.'

Dr Furnace looks down at Kate's file, writes a couple of notes, and prepares to continue the final part of the examination with the aid of eye drops. 'Your own?'

Kate laughs, blushes and looks anywhere but over at Castle. What is with the personal questions and oversharing in this consulting room? The next time Beckett needs an eye appointment, she's going to demand to see Dr I Amcat's puss rather than being subjected to Iris's Furnace.

'Nope. But I get to drive a Ferrari …'

'As long as you see fit, Dr Furnace,' adds Castle, using only the tiniest eye pun.

'I see.'

Later, when all eyes are dotted and 'ts' are crossed, Castle stands, collects his coat and prepares to open the door for a eye-drop stunned Beckett. She can find her way with assistance, but the residue of the drops has left her vision fuzzy and her peripheral sight non-existent.

'Thank you,' Kate says, feeling slightly drunk and more content with her final treatment at the hands of Dr Iris Furnace. 'Good bye.'

The doctor farewells them both, but just as she is about to veer towards reception for her next patient, she diverts to Castle's elbow and nudges him gently.

'Oh, and if we meet again, Rick? Please don't ever think you can make cornea jokes than me. Okay?'

Castle nods in his appreciation, smiles and escorts Kate to the elevator in his best guide-dog-cute puppy manner. 'She was funny,' he says, pushing the button to call the lift and running his fingers along the inside of Kate's wrist just to get a reaction.

She pushes him away with a scoff. 'Castle! She was hitting on me.'

'I know! Wasn't it hot?'

She mutters something for his ears only, about double standards and how he would have been jealous if a male doctor had been doing the same thing. 'You're so predictable, Castle. But in a good way, sometimes …'

'Aww. A compliment! Hey, but Iris was looking at me lustily too, Kate,' he says, snatching her back against his arm with the slight downward step into the elevator. 'Did you ever think that maybe she's bifocal?'

Kate swallows a laugh, links her arm in his and asks to be taken to The Old Haunt. She needs a drink. Suddenly her throat feels like a furnace.


	13. Epilogue

_With the posting of the last chapter, comes my thanks. For reading, for being interested in the story, and to those of you who have let me know if you've enjoyed it or not. You've been a lovely audience to write for. Hoping that you all enjoy the season ahead, let's trust it's a good one!_

**NOW:**

They spend the night before the wedding apart. It seems ludicrous, but Alexis arrives home with a couple of questions for her dad, Martha descends with hugs and air kisses for them all, and Kate decides to give them some space.

She intends to enjoy some of her own, but from the time she walks away from him at the loft door to the moment he rings her, she misses him. If someone had forewarned Kate a month ago that this would happen, she'd have arrested the person for being disorderly and delusional in a public place. But now? She wears Rick Castle like the way her clothing infuses his cologne — obviously, easily, and so very, very there.

Beckett doesn't try to deny her feelings on this wedding eve. She's come to the conclusion that it's a waste of energy. Her body remembers how tightly coiled it was at The Old Haunt the night of Ryan and Jenny's gathering, how the stress associated with repressing her Castle emotions had been quite overwhelming — knots in her gut, muscle tension in her shoulders, her neck, unassailable itch all over her erogenous zones, kinks through the tissue of her heart, a ginormous lump in her throat instead of at the front of his pants …

Wasted energy of denial. Tonight she feels like she's spent the last few days in a luxurious spa, post eye injury. Worked-over, relaxed, flattened and aerated, fluffed and pampered, satisfied and left wanting more. If she could set up camp in that day spa 24/7, Kate probably would. For the first time in two weeks — actually three years — she's not horrified by that notion or the fact she can admit it to herself.

She feels … _what? _Not 'complete'. There's a sugary blehness to that concept. Not proud nor arrogant. Not afraid that her feminist costume will be torn off her back and stomped to shreds. More like … loved? Yeah, treasured. Even able and ready to love back.

Maybe she's growing up? Or growing less inhibited, draining the moat around her own fortress dry as she bunkers down in a different castle? Perhaps she's growing less flighty, less like the doe frightened of the hunter — with him, a man so life-affirming instead of life-taking, she doesn't feel the need to flee. She knows for certain that he's not going to slit her throat or stab her emotionally. Almost.

Whoa!

It's all way too self-involving, this being in love. And besides? She still has one foot partially out the door. She hasn't told him she's got it bad. He hasn't said anything, despite being able to articulate most things during the throes of passion — like words without meaning, moans without endings, profanities without wanting to cuss, but the _I love you_ hasn't slipped out. It's as palpable as her sensitive wrist spot, as real as his habit of wearing untucked shirts whenever he can, but it's as unsaid as the night without him is long.

She's in bed by 9.30. He calls her while she's reading James Patterson's latest. Kate realizes she's been turning the page, running her eyes over the text, but concentrating on other things instead of comprehending his words.

'Can I come over?'

_Like that._

The corner of her mouth hits the phone. If she smiles any wider, her cell will be an eye-phone. Literally. 'Yeah. Of course, but Castle?'

'I know what you're going to say.' She hears the goofy resignation in his voice and wishes he'd materialize at her door like a scene from the sunniest rom-com. 'That I shouldn't be spending the night with the non-bride before the wedding, that it's bad luck, but Beckett?'

'Mmm?'

'I miss you.'

It's as simple as that. And she misses him. For the first time in an age, her body responds with something akin to emotional seepage. It's starts in her thigh muscles, a gentle pressure, then a release as though they've turned to mush. Her mouth dries, wind against sand, and she needs water. Her lips fall apart, parched, wanting. Her stomach sags and is tickled by the tiny winglets of nervous butterflies. Breathing, heart rate, desirous responses all accelerate, but her lower body is like goo.

She feels languid and abuzz. It's all so simultaneous and contradictory. It's all really obvious, and she suddenly remembers experiencing this thrill in high school when Jack Biviano asked her out on a date and brought her flowers before they left. Jack was no Castle, but the whiplash to her heart is kinda the same, multiplied by ten due to every adult emotion available. Giddy, lightheaded, sickening, bristling, craptastic, soul-consuming love.

'Kate?'

It's time. She doesn't even muffle her voice with the top of her bedding, but annunciates each word like a precious gift. 'I miss you too.'

She hears him gasp. 'So? I should come? Um, and get to your place?'

Beckett closes the covers on Patterson and stretches out under her duvet. The novel slips to the side of the bed, her arms extend above her head and she remembers why James Patterson isn't her favourite take-to-bed mystery writer. It would be so easy to demand that he come. It'd be searingly hot to get into her red robe, run them a bath with bubbles and work the whole wedding eve seduction, because, yeah, she wants him. Kate can feel the amazing raunch-launch teasing her body — mouth, hands, neck, breasts …

'Richard? I bumped into an old friend of yours in Lower … oh, I'm sorry, darling, you're on the phone … I'll just—'

'Give me two minutes, Mother,' Kate hears him say, and she closes her eyes on the red robe fantasy and reserves it for a special round two on the wedding night. There's no petty jealousy here — about a man speaking to his mother while on the phone with her — it's merely another thing that makes Rick Castle so appealing.

'Sorry. Kate? You were saying? About your place?'

She smiles at his disgruntled tone, wondering if he'd been on his way towards, at the very least, some verbal tussle over the phone. The mood has been altered, and that's okay too. It'll make the anticipation for tomorrow that little more potent. Her heart stammers with the idea of seeing him so soon. Her words breeze over the nervous humps.

'Hey? You can come anytime, but I'm beat now. Pick me up for the wedding?'

She hears the catch in his breathing, imagines the gap 'tween his lips, the disappointed flare of his nostrils. Kate grins as he mutters an 'okay' somewhere between his 'I was thinking …' and 'what if …?'

She counters. 'The anticipation'll be great.'

'I like to operate in the here and now,' he continues.

'It's only twelve hours. I'll make it worth your while.'

'You're _always_ worth my while. What are you wearing …?'

Kate doesn't answer his question. It'd take hours to describe what she wants to do to him, what she needs him to do to her. It's so complicated. Nothing short of his hands all over her, his tongue bending and tweaking in all the right places, his mouth melding with her skin, is going to cut it tonight.

'Till tomorrow, Detective,' he whispers in her ear, dampening down his previous question to sleepy time talk. 'I love you.'

_Oh. _ There's no time like the present, in Beckett-land, it seems. And, things are easier to say if she doesn't over-think them. Or do them in person. 'Yeah, well? I love you too.'

When he doesn't speak or disconnect the line, and all she can hear is the upped ante of his silence, she feels her whole body flush with the knowledge that she's rendered him speechless.

'You okay?'

'I'm … I'm _fantastic._

Kate brings her arm down from her bed head, wraps it around her body and delights. Her hand finds its way to her mouth and she pushes her fist into it so she doesn't giggle like a schoolgirl.

'Night, then.' she bites out after a moment of just biting. She waits for him to disconnect first or to say something funny. He doesn't, so she seeks a humourous epitaph to the ILY marker in their lives. 'Make sure you bring the Ferrari, Castle. I'll break both of your legs if we're in a cab with that Kurt guy.'

She ends the call. For the first time in her adult life, Kate Beckett feels entirely right. It's deliciously different, and she's (nearly) in total love.

* * *

><p>After the worst night of non-sleep, Castle runs the shower cold in an attempt to douse his early morning desire. He slept sometime between fighting the urge to call her back, running over to her apartment with a marriage proposal and a bottle of champagne, and jumping around the loft screaming 'woo-hooooooooo. Beckett lurves me, woooo-hooooo'<p>

He would have done it had he been alone.

_I love you too?_

No way! _Yes_ way!

He feels like a kid in the brightest, sexiest toy shop. The thing is? Richard Castle doesn't' want anything from Mattel or Nintendo. He doesn't want a load of shiny playthings to stuff his Christmas stocking. He's not even craving the loudest, whizziest, techno-pop gadget in the world.

_She said 'I love you'. He's not even sure that this is real, is annoyed at himself for not asking her to say it over and over and over again … but it could have been that he'd had a strong nightcap and a piece of cake with red food-coloured frosting, and he's imagined it …_

The doubts trickle down the plug hole with the onset of warmer water. Castle smiles upward into the stream, lathers some body wash that reminds him of Beckett in his shower — after she drizzled the stuff all over herself — and he lets the memories wash over him.

It's not until Alexis raps on the bathroom door and orders him to stop singing The Isley Brothers' 'This Old Heart of Mine' that he realizes he's been staring at the same set of tiles for longer than he should have been. It's probably time to gun the Ferrari. If he's late for a date with Kate, then he's a fool with a cruel tool … in other words, less poetic than he feels this fine morn. And, if he's early to the Beckett apartment, then there's ample opportunity for them to start their wedding night that little bit earlier.

She texts him exactly the same thought, and suddenly Richard Castle is outta that shower, walkin' on sunshine, bopping to all the funny, sunny love songs and hopping round the loft like a bunny named Warren.

Yeah. He's just that little bit delirious. And it's mother-freaking, Play Station 5, Harry Potter finale, IMAX, Apple product of AWESOME!

Alexis and Martha? They look at him, exchange a smile, and pat at his hair and arms. His mother smooths her hands over his starched, white collar and straightens his immaculate, navy tie. His daughter giggles. Then she touches his face and feels his forehead, asking him something about having a fever.

_Not really … BUT HE IS HOTTER THAN ALL GET OUT!_

As he jumps in the car, Castle knows if he could write a Nikki Heat novel today, there'd be so many love and sex scenes, punctuated by exclamation marks, that he might be courted by one of the leading romance publication houses of New York. His heroine is beautiful, sensual, coltishly responsive. And the hero? Dashing, experienced, gruff but absolute man-goo round his woman … and so bouncingly excited, nothing can stop him spinning the Ferrari wheels in anticipation.

He reaches Beckett's place in record time. Castle flies up the stairs rather than waiting for any other means of upward motion, finds himself a bit breathless by the time he's nearly at her door, and wishes his collar didn't feel so tight. It's not just the sudden burst of activity that's got him reaching his finger into the knot of his tie and loosening it.

He's nervous. Again. Like the night at The Old Haunt. Like every single time this woman pulls his buttons and presses his hair … um, or turns his motor and starts his dials? Or touches his car or drives his body?

Castle stutters with the final steps to her door, but he doesn't have the opportunity to puzzle over his confused thoughts about pushing, pulling, turning — that's exactly what she's doing to him, her hand on his arm, her mouth over his, her fingers in his hair, her breath on his dials …

And he's flat against the inside of her apartment door before he can doubt that she loves him _too_, or that she might want to retract the words.

Maybe aggressive kissing is a Kate Beckett coping mechanism? It certainly was when she mistook the joking text from Jenny's phone to be serious, and it definitely was when she was trying to distract him in the pool game at The Haunt. Castle expects to be bruised, mauled and molested like the cheap Beckett-whore he is, but she softens completely against his body, opens her lips like she's been denied water for a while and he's the closest thing to an ice-cold canteen.

He doesn't want to go out today. Or ever. He wants to stay inside. Be inside.

Trying to open his eyes to see what's going on, Castle struggles to break the spell that is her mouth, the feel of her hair, the sheen of her skin, her scent, her dress against his blind fingers. He can't. His eyes remain closed that little bit longer to extend the blast on each and every other sense he owns.

Sight is overrated. Seems that unravelling the mystery that is Beckett involves her being one-eyed initially, him being blindsighted right now, and finally having their eyes wide open when they said their first ILYs.

True, they'd told each other over the phone … speaking of phone … _oh_, the part of his hearing that's not clouded by arousing wisps of Beckett moan-a-logue can hear her cell. Somewhere, it's ringing. Kate must hear it too. The pliable give of her body changes and she stiffens slightly, the harsh friction returns to the kiss, the freedom of her hands under his stiff, stiff white shirt is stifled. But it's also very stiffened … and stifled too …

'Kate, _god_ … don't …'

'The phone,' she murmurs against his lips, in very un-Beckett like fashion. 'S'pose I … should get …'

He wishes he had a giant, superhero-powered hammer that he could reach out and smash her cell into fragments of nothing. She'd be impressed. Kate would want to feel his biceps and swoon against his powerful body. Castle hears someone sigh. He thinks it might be him, but when the phone silences only to start up again, it's Beckett that moves with a growl.

'Don't go anywhere, okay? Please?'

If he could find the ability to make his mouth work, Castle wouldn't say words. He'd laugh. _Go anywhere?_ The only place he wants to go is somewhere horizontal and buoyant, where he can run his hands along the smooth, shapely cows of her calves, where he can shimmy up that dress …

_Good God. That dress?_

Castle has never seen it before, never wants to see it again in public, because the temptation to sashay his hands under straps and into cuppage will be too much for him to ignore. It's hardly daring. It's demure in its deepest blue, classic in neckline and pure class of hem. But it has no back, and everything about Kate Beckett's spine has him wishing she'd hire him as her personal chiropractor.

He pushes his butt against her door and follows her into her living space, using her vulnerable back-turned, cellphone-to-ear posture to make his first professional assessment of her vertebrae. Hmm, alignment problems. Definitely needs tactile manipulation. Of the tongue-spine variety ...

Instead of using his hands, he deposits a series of tender kisses along her shoulders, inwards to the base of her skull, all the while grateful that she's wearing her hair up, her defenses down, her skin level for his total access. Her heels are exactly the correct height for them — for him to kiss her like this, for her to lean back against him so that her head is on his shoulder, for him to whisper in her non-cell occupied ear that he missed her last night, that he loves her and wants her, 'so please just hang up.'

'Um …, ok, right …'

Kate seems as affected by his words as his touch. She hesitates into the phone for the slightest of moments and Castle wonders if it'd be more time efficient to let her keep talking and simply allow his mouth to wander wherever it will. Would certainly give the person on the other end of the line a bit of a thrill. Grinning to himself, he moves around to the side of her body, placing more lurid kisses to any patch of skin he can reach. Beckett tries to use her other arm to hoist him away, even sidestepping him at one stage, but he follows. If he can push her onto the couch, drop gracefully to his knees and make a series of mouth moves count, she'll be—

'Sorry,' he hears her say. 'Um, Lanie? Just give me a sec … no, nothing. Ok … what time? _Where?_

He's managed to coerce Kate into placing the backs of her wedding-outfitted legs into the cushions of her couch, but she's not sitting yet. She's staring at a point somewhere over his shoulder, a frown on her face, a problem to be solved. Castle continues to massage and stroke, tease, tongue, torment in dappled waves of movement she's no longer avoiding.

'Really, Lanie? Okay hang on …'

She puts her hand over the receiver, just as he's pushed her gently onto the couch. God, this is going to be good. They're both dressed so formally, it makes it that much more sensational and sexy.

'You are spectacular, Detective Beckett. You really, really are,' he says, as he makes his intentions known. Kneeling between her legs, he dips his head and uses his hands to create the perfect beeline for Target Oral.

Castle! _Um … oh._ Come on. It's _ah_ ... Lanie. Their car's died, twenty minutes from here. Can we give them a—'

'Nope.'

She's shuddering and he hasn't even started. Not really. Castle is shuddering too, and he's not even in first gear yet.

'It's a wedding. They're our friends,' she whispers desperately, flinging her head back against the couch, holding the phone so tightly it makes her knuckles white, trying to repel him by pressing her knees together. Her attempt is lame and they both know it.

'They can get a cab.'

'It'd be nice to go together. And Esposito has to be early to do Best—'

'We'd have to leave now, Kate, and believe me,' he says, looking directly into her face, loving the flutter of her lashes, the shock-blush to her cheeks, 'this can_not_ wait.'

'Oh God, Castle, but it will have to,' she says. There's something about her tone that makes him stop, prop one elbow on her knee and actually listen to what Lanie's saying from the other end of the line. Castle can hear Dr Parish's voice and it takes him back to this apartment last week, when Lanie was the guardian of Kate's blood pressure.

'What is it?'

He's relieved to see her grin. As long as their people are okay and just being demanding and dramatic, Castle doesn't really mind postponing things. But not for long.

'Esposito's supposed to be there already, Lanie has fallen over and strained her ankle on the curb, and every drive-by cab is taken …'

'So?'

Kate holds her hand over the speaker again and whispers. 'Lanie's pissed and they're fighting …'

He rubs his hand over her knee and shoots her a grin from the bottom of his roguish files. 'Okay,' he mouths, then louder, for Lanie's sake, 'And how is this OUR problem?'

He's rewarded with a gorgeous Beckett smile. He gets to his feet, thinking of Ryan, his absent best man, the lovely Jenny, her special day, Lanie fallen by the side of the road and hurting her ankle. Then he looks at Beckett and decides that he'd much rather make her come than go and help, but sometimes, pride goeth before the orgasm — or is that 'ride goeth before Lanie's fall?'

And other times, interruption and chivalry are just real bitches.

* * *

><p>The wedding unveils before them all like a tulle of happiness across the stain of NYC policing. The bride is beautiful, resplendent. The groom handsome, happy, nervous. The music stirs all kinds of emotion in Kate's heart, the vows stimulate tears of the most joyous kind, and the feel of Castle's hand closing over hers during the ceremony reminds her that (sometimes) life is wonderful.<p>

There's no reason for her not to be part of that.

By the time Jenny and Ryan are officially married, the morning has waltzed into lunchtime and an early afternoon banquet is laid out for guests to enjoy. Castle doesn't hold her hand as they wander around. He gives her space, when she doesn't really need it, doesn't really want it, but to tell him otherwise would get the extreme reaction that's so common with Castle. He'd take her 'let's hold hands and have an occasional kiss at a romantic wedding' as _ Let's find the closest gap in the wall, get totally naked and go for it in front of the bridal party and their parents.'_

Besides, she doesn't want to confuse him today, in this perfect setting where a gentle breeze, the lull of laughter, chat, canapes, love themes all blend together to make her misty-eyed. At least she's not patched eye.

Castle is with Lanie, finding her a seat as soon as they shift spots into the lunch area. Her ankle isn't too bad, but with Esposito performing the Best Man duties, Castle tries to ensure she's comfortable. Kate leans against the rustic brick features of the indoor-outdoor wedding venue and watches them. Him.

_Rick._

His name still rolls off her tongue like a bittersweet chocolate syrup, only now the sweet sensation is so prolific, it overrides any other taste. It's taken her a long time to get to this point, and now she's here and (almost) feeling entirely happy, Kate thinks it suits her. She likes it. A lot. And he's so stunning in that suit, with his hair like a—

She must be daydreaming, imprinting the Castle and Lanie scene on her retina, staring into space. He's at her elbow, leaning into her and the wall before she knows he's even coming towards her.

'I wouldn't say this in front of Jenny, but you are the most exquisite woman here.'

She grins and hopes she doesn't look like a fool. A fool in love, _sheesh_, welcome to the new decade, Kate Beckett. 'Exquisite woman, Castle? Really?'

He moves behind her as though he's going to the bar for a drink, only to tuck his body into her back as their shoulders share the same brick wall. 'Yes, Kate. Exquisite _woman._ I, of course, am the most exquisite man here.'

His whispered words pepper her ear, and she's spiced and ready to dance, drink or just line the wall of the reception and make out. The bride's parents can always look the other way.

'Most exquisite man? Is that right?'

Kate feels the weight of his chest brush against her naked spine, fights the urge to press her lower body into his, and tries to concentrate on his words. It's hard to keep her hands to herself. It's very hard.

'You're right! It is,' he says, whisking his cheek so close to the side of her face, she can feel his non-existent stubble. 'But speaking of right, that phone conversation last night? Felt like a whole lotta right to me.'

It's an unsubtle hint. She doesn't leave it to linger long, lest they both suffer from stage fright or unnecessary worry.

She turns to face him, leans forward and brushes a kiss to his cheek. He looks as surprised as she'd felt on the day when he'd done exactly the same thing after their first case. Three long years ago, gone in the single blink of a cue-stick injured eye. Replaced by the clarity of here. _Now._

'Can an exquisite woman invite an exquisite man to lunch with her?' she says, offering her arm in a playful role reversal, while reveling in the feel of his palm against her cheek. 'Over entree, I'd love to tell you how much that phone conversation means to me. Okay?'

Kate watches his face. She reads that it's better than okay, it's a prologue to a lifetime of chapters, each new segment of text detailing the climaxes, the crevices of life. Their new work in progress.

As she steps away from the wall, feeling the solid pressure of his hand at the small of her back where dress meets nudity, she knows he's there. The low patches of life will now be supported, as easily as he's providing warmth to her spine, and she can reciprocate. Kate ducks her head slightly as Esposito catches her eye in a teasing grin, but remembers to hold it up proudly as Castle pulls her seat out for lunch. Is this love? It's certainly solidarity, companionship, sexual spark and lust, but she's (nearly) sure that this might be soulmate-type stuff.

'Sorry to say that there's no pool table here today,' laughs Esposito, sitting across the long, rectangular table of guests as they wait for the bride and groom to be introduced and seated amongst them. Might need to party on at The Old Haunt later? Make sure we find out the true winner of that game before the eye poke?'

Kate hears a giggle from someone, a round of applause further up the table, but it's her heart that listens hardest. She's been the true winner of this endless stoush, without a pool cue or black ball in sight.

* * *

><p><strong>Sometime in the Future:<strong>

The lights of The Old Haunt dim to sensual mode as Kate stretches her arms out over the bar, smiles a 'good night' to one of the extremely attractive, young male staff members they always have around, and contemplates life. Not too damn bad at all.

Esplanie were the last guests to leave this particular party, preceded by Alexis and her two beautiful children, Ashley with his daddy smile on, Ryan and Jenny with their teenaged trio, and spinster-sexy Maddy with her latest partner. It's been a great night, one of the best The Haunt has seen, according to party host Richard Castle.

He's in her personal space, breathing down the gap between her neck and dress before she has time to play with her wedding band and think about life before he entered her precinct. Castle is as integral to her as cardiac muscle now. He's as part of her life as the veneer on the bar is to The Haunt. Castle is _it_, and she's happy. She'll admit it to anyone.

'Got the pool table ready, and guess what?' he says, skimming still-soft fingers over the tension in her shoulders, picking spots he knows are getting rheumy.

'What now?'

'I found this. Thought you might wanna dress in theme.'

She looks over her shoulder, sees the sheer oomph of red she wore here nearly twenty years ago, and laughs. 'Castle, I don't need that anymore …?'

'Beckett! _What? _ It'd still fit you, you know you're rocking the mature body. And besides … we never _did_ work out who would win that game.'

She scoffs. Yeah, that red piece would fit — um, mostly — but she's driven the Ferrari enough to know who is the better driver and who is the best pool player. She's tired and successful, just wants to kiss him and snuggle. Is that too much to ask, given her newest conquest?

'Yeah, well I don't think it'd be suitable to wear that in my new role.'

'Why?' he asks with false shock. 'You wore it when you were a detective. What's the difference?'

She laughs. It's bubbly and contagious. It's evolved from the years of knowing him, loving him, fighting tooth and nail, cleaning teeth, cutting nails, making up, fighting again, learning to embrace the companionship and rightness. She owns her laugh, but it echoes his now. 'It's not mayoral. I might be given the sack before the term begins.'

He moves, low and seductive, the waggle of eyebrows not diminished by the distinguished grey bits in his hair. 'I'll give you the sack. Any time.'

'Aren't you tired? Been a helluva day.'

He kisses her neck, scoops the last of his champagne and brings the tip of the glass to her lips. 'Tired means bed. I've always been friendly with the mayor of the day, but I've never slept with one. This will be a first, Ms Beckett.'

'I hope so. I don't think Rudy Giuliani would have wanted to go back to your loft.' He snorts and she continues, 'Just saying.'

'No, but he might have worn this red, pool playing piece. Doncha think?'

She takes his proffered arm, whacking him playfully as they leave the bar. They bypass the pool table, he stops and looks at it wistfully, sighing with drama. 'You know? I always thought that after your work as First Deputy Commissioner you'd have taken the top job. Even now, tonight, when it's all done and dusted and I'm married to the Mayor of New York, I'm surprised. I know you have your reasons. I just thought I'd always be with a cop.'

Kate leans over and switches off the light above the pool table. 'Oh? Disappointed Castle? You know that I don't have to wear my mayoral robes tonight …' she feels the familiar flush steal over her, the heat of long term commitment and workable passion creap up like a slow-combustion stove. 'And you know? My uniform still fits. Like a _glove.'_

Castle moves quickly — for a man his age — drags her by the hand to the front door and performs a small twirl as they exit. The paparazzi will probably be around despite the late hour, but it doesn't stop her from kissing his cheek in the most public display of affection around. She has changed, but not. So has he.

'Why, Kate! I'm not forty anymore, and I really don't think I'd be up to any hi-jinks with handcuffs.'

She smiles, waves to a flash of cameras with mayor-like grace and moves towards their detail. 'Yeah well, we could always just cuddle, Castle. You're great at that.'

He holds the door of the car open and bows. 'You have no idea.'

**The End.**


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